Ipecacuanha Cultivation at Kew

Abstract

I HAVE just received No. 158 of NATURE, containing Prof. Owen's letter. “On the National Herbarium.” In that letter Prof. Owen quotes several sentences relating to ipecacuanha cultivation in India from my last report for the official year ending March 31, 1874, on the Calcutta Botanical Garden, with the object of substantiating an insinuation of bad cultivation at Kew. He does not, however, quote the whole of what I wrote about ipecacuanha in the report referred to, and the result is, that a casual reader of his letter would form the impression that, but for Edinburgh, ipecacuanha would not have been introduced into India, and that, consequently, the Kew establishment cannot be relied upon for the dissemination of useful plants among the British possessions abroad, which is, I imagine, one of “the works and applications for which a nation provides and supports its collections of living plants.”