The American herd of about 1,500,000 is by far the largest of the three. It goes straight to the Pribiloffs, where it goes ashore on two almost barren islands—St Paul and St George. The Japanese herd, numbering about 40,000, makes for Robben Island, off northern Japan. The Russian herd, now estimated at about 200,000, goes to a few rocky islands of the Commander archipelago off Kamchatka. The moving herds consist almost entirely of females and young. The bulls winter further north, tend to be solitary during the winter, and precede the cows to the summer homes. The breeding season lasts for about two months. During this time the bull never eats or touches a drop of water. He never leaves the land. He arrives sleek and fat from the ocean pasture and is able to survive entirely on stored energy. This keeps him alive, even when he fights scores of terrible battles with younger rivals. Towards the end of summer he naturally is a sorry looking creature. One day, actuated by some common impulse, cows and calves depart. Then the bulls, their arduous labors of race propagation over for ten months, draw back among the rocks for a long rest. _The Magic Bark of the Cinchona Tree_ The shadow of a pale Spanish lady, dead for almost three centuries, has returned to the dense rain forests of the western slopes of the Andes. The shadow is that of the Countess of Chinchon, wife of the redoubtable Don Luiz Geronimo de Cabrera Bobadilla y Mendoza, colonial viceroy of Peru. She was dying of a strange disease in Lima in 1638. Her Jesuit confessor, the story goes, gave a medicine to her doctor made from the bark of a common Peruvian tree. It supposedly saved her life and two years later she returned to Spain, carrying with her some of the magic bark. Thus she gave to the world one of the supreme medicines of all times. A century later the Swedish botanist Linnaeus tried to pay a compliment to the long-dead beauty but misspelled her name—calling her tree “cinchona”. Out of it came quinine. The Andean forests remained for 200 years the only source of the magic drug—quinine. The cinchona trees grew wild. They were stripped of bark recklessly and became very scarce. By 1850 the price of quinine was $50 an ounce and only the rich could afford to have malaria. The British tried to transplant the tree in India and failed. Then Dutch botanists obtained some seed, planted it in the East Indies, and developed high-yielding species. Soon this region became the sole source of the world’s supply. The price dropped to 18 cents an ounce and the lands over which the long-dead Countess had ruled dropped out of the picture. Now South American countries, notably Venezuela and Bolivia, are reclaiming the crop with improved varieties of the cinchona tree, equal to the best produced by the Dutch. They are regaining rapidly the dead lady’s gift. _Colombia’s Ant Tree_