The first description of the quinquina-tree is due to that memorable French expedition to South America, to which all branches of science owe so much. The members of this expedition, MM. De la Condamine, Godin, Bouguer, and the botanist Joseph de Jussieu, sailed from Rochelle on the 16th of May, 1735, to measure the arc of a degree near Quito, and thus determine the shape of the earth. After a residence at Quito, Jussieu set out for Loxa, to examine the quinquina-tree, in March, 1739, and in 1743 La Condamine visited Loxa, and stayed for some time at Malacotas, with a Spaniard whose chief source of income was the collection of bark. He obtained some young plants with the intention of taking them down the river Amazons to Cayenne, and thence transporting them to the Jardin des Plantes at Paris; but a wave washed over his little vessel near Para, at the mouth of the great river, and carried off the box in which he had preserved these plants for more than eight months. "Thus," he says, "I lost them after all the care I had taken during a voyage of more than twelve hundred leagues."[19] This was the first attempt to transport chinchona-plants from their native forests. Condamine described the quinquina-tree of Loxa in the 'Mémoires de l'Académie;'[20] he was the first man of science who examined and described this important plant; and in 1742 Linnæus established the genus CHINCHONA, in honour of the Countess Ana of Chinchon. He, however, only knew of two species, that of Loxa, which was named _C. officinalis_, and the _C. Caribæa_, since degraded to the medicinally worthless genus of _Exostemmas_. Joseph de Jussieu, whose name is associated with that of La Condamine in the first examination of the chinchona-trees of Loxa, continued his researches in South America after the departure of his associate. He penetrated on foot into the province of Canelos, the scene of Gonzalo Pizarro's wonderful achievements and terrible sufferings; he visited Lima with M. Godin; he travelled over Upper Peru as far as the forests of Santa Cruz de la Sierra; and he was the first botanist who examined and sent home specimens of the coca-plant, the beloved narcotic of the Peruvian Indian. After fifteen years of laborious work he was robbed of his large collection of plants by a servant at Buenos Ayres, who believed that the boxes contained money. This loss had a disastrous effect on poor Jussieu, who, in 1771, returned to France, deprived of reason, after an absence of thirty-four years. Dr. Weddell has named the shrubby variety of _C. Calisaya_ in honour of this unfortunate botanist _C. Josephiana_.