The Dutch, who possess in the island of Java a range of forest-covered mountains admirably adapted for chinchona cultivation, were, however, the first to take active steps for its introduction into the Eastern Hemisphere; and their praiseworthy exertions deserve, what they lay claim to with justice, the approbation of the whole civilized world. The experiment in Java, however, has only been tried with a very limited number of valuable species of chinchonæ, and has met with very limited success, owing to the introduction of worthless kinds, and to mistakes in the cultivation, committed during the first few years. For the last thirty years Dutch scientific men, among whom the name of the botanist Blume may be mentioned, had urged their Government to undertake the introduction of chinchona-plants into Java. But it was not until the year 1852 that M. Pahud, the Dutch Minister of the Colonies, was authorized to employ an agent to collect plants and seeds of valuable species in Peru, and to convey them to Java. He selected, for this important mission, M. Justus Charles Hasskarl, a botanist who had for some time superintended the gardens in Java, but who was a stranger to South America--ignorant of the country, the people, and the languages--unacquainted with the forests where the chinchona-trees are found, and who had never seen them growing in their natural state. He sailed for Peru in December, 1852, with orders not to confine himself to the _Calisaya_ plant, but to collect plants and seeds of as many different species as possible. His original orders were to proceed from Guayaquil to the chinchona-forests of Loxa in the first instance; but he changed his plan, and, landing at Lima, crossed the cordilleras in May, 1853. It would be difficult, in making a chance journey from the coast to the forests of the Eastern Andes, to hit upon a part where valuable species of chinchona-trees are not known to exist. There are such spaces--forest tracts--intervening between the more favoured regions, where only species of little value are found, such as _C. pubescens_, _C. scrobiculata_, &c.; and on one of these, between the region of grey barks in Huanuco and that of _C. Calisaya_ in Caravaya, M. Hasskarl, through being unacquainted with the localities, was so unfortunate as to stumble. He crossed the Andes by the road from Lima to Tarma, and descended the eastern slopes into the montañas of Vitoc, Uchubamba, and Monobamba; returning thence by Xauxa into the loftier region of the Andes. Near Uchubamba he saw trees which he believed to be _C. Calisaya_; but that species is never found to the north of the province of Caravaya. He however collected a quantity of seeds of this imaginary _C. Calisaya_, and four packets of a species which he called _C. ovata_, with smaller quantities of _C. pubescens_ and _C. amygdalifolia_.