Though little was known of the tree until quite lately, there was never any doubt concerning the value of the bark. In 1779 a Spanish ship from Lima, bound to Cadiz, was captured off Lisbon by the 'Hussar' frigate, and her cargo consisted chiefly of "red bark," part of which was imported into England. In 1785 and 1786 Ruiz states that the collectors began to gather the bark of _C. succirubra_, and sell it at Guayaquil, and from that time it continued to be found in the European markets. It contains a larger proportion of alkaloids than any other kind, amounting to as much as from 3 to 4 per cent. of the substance of the bark, and of this a fair share is quinine. Fine samples yield 3.9 per cent., selling at 8_s._ 9_d._ per lb.; and the quill bark from the smaller branches 3.6 per cent.[51] Mr. Howard has recently procured 8.5 per cent. of alkaloids from a specimen of "red bark." A large supply of plants of this species is flourishing in India and Ceylon, and, from the richness of the species, the comparatively low elevation at which it thrives, and its hardy nature, it may be expected to become a cultivated plant of great value and importance. In 1857 the export of bark from the port of Guayaquil, the place of shipment for the _C. succirubra_, amounted to 7006 quintals, valued at 23,353_l._[52] In 1849-50 Dr. Weddell gives the amount at 1042 quintals. III.--THE NEW-GRANADA REGION. The importance of the chinchona-trees was fully established in the middle of the last century, and, Don Miguel de Santistevan, the director of the mint at Bogota, having addressed a memorial on the bark trade (_estanco de cascarilla_) to the Viceroy Marquis of Villar in 1753, the attention of the Spanish Government was seriously turned to the subject. When the Viceroy Don Pedro Mesia de la Cerda, Marquis de la Vega de Armijo, went out to Bogota in 1760,[53] he was accompanied by the botanist Don José Celestino Mutis, a native of Cadiz, who was appointed to conduct a botanical survey of New Granada, and especially to investigate the bark of the chinchona-trees.[54] In 1772 Mutis found these trees in the neighbourhood of Bogota, and described four kinds in 1792, which he called _C. lancifolia_, _C. cordifolia_, _C. oblongifolia_, and _C. ovalifolia_, yielding four kinds of barks--_anaranjada_, _amarilla_, _roja_, and _blanca_, or orange-coloured, yellow, red, and white.[55] He declared the _C. lancifolia_ to be excellent for intermittent fevers, in which he was right, and to be identical with the _C. Condaminea_ of Loxa, in which he was wrong; the _C. cordifolia_ he recommended for remittent fevers, and the other two for inflammatory diseases. In reality the two last are not chinchonas at all, but belong to the genus _Ladenbergia_, and contain no fever-dispelling alkaloids whatever; while the _C. Cordifolia_ is so poor in alkaloids as to be practically worthless.