The cultivation of cinchona was commenced in 1861-62. The first cinchona seeds received in Bengal were some sent by Sir J. Hooker, in 1861, to Dr. Anderson, Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden, who conducted all the cinchona experiments in Bengal until he left in 1869. Dr. Anderson suggested the establishment of a chinchona nursery in Darjeeling, as affording the greatest hope of success: the proposal was approved, and a site was selected near the summit of Senchal in the midst of dense forest. The situation on Senchal proved too severe for cinchona; so in April 1863 the plants were temporarily removed to a garden at Lebong, a warm, well sheltered spur below Darjeeling, at a height of 6,000 feet above the sea. For a permanent plantation space was found, 12 miles south-east from Darjeeling, in the Rangjo valley at Rangbi, on the south-eastern slope of a long spur projecting from Senchal at an elevation between 1,300 and 4,000 feet above the sea.

Here the cultivation, on an estensive scale, of those species of cinchona which contain quinine and allied febrifuge alkaloids in their bark was begun in 1864. The plantation was started with one hundred plants each of Cinchona succirubra and Cinchona officinalis, and two plants of Cinchona Calisaya, at an elevation of about 4,000 feet. The stock of plants rapidly increased, so that ten years after the inception of the undertaking, there were nearly three million trees in existence, mostly of Cinchona succirubra, and the original clearing on the slope of the Rangbi hasd been extended in a south-easterly direction to the Rishop and Mangpu ridges in the Rangjo valley, while new extensions, comprising in 1881 about 750 acres, had been opened at Labdah on the nothern and Sitong on the southern slope of the Rayang valley. It was soon discovered that Cinchona officinalis, the species yielding crown or Loxa bark, did not thrive, so that its further propagation was discontinued. For about the first decade the majority of the trees on the plantation were Cinchona succirubra, the species which yields red bark, poor in quinine but rich in a misture of febrifuge alkaloids allied to quinine. The remainder of the trees were mostly of Cinchona Calisaya, or Ledgeriana, as it is now called, the species yielding yellow bark, rich in quinine.

In 1868-70 proposals were submitted by Dr. Anderson for the manufacture at the Rangbi plantation of a cheap but powerful febrifuge, well suited for use in native hospitals and charitable dispensaries, by separating the cinchona alkaloids from the yound cinchona bark. The purchase of machinery for the experiment was sanctioned; and a factory was established at Mangpu in connection with the Rangbi plantation. This factory was equipped with the simplest of appliances for the extraction, by a combined acid and alkali process, of the mixed alkaloids from the red bark trees; and in 1874 just ten years after the opening of the Rangbi clearing, the manufacture of cinchona febrifuge was begun, the first year's working yielding about 50 pounds of febrifuge. For the next 14 years, upto 1887, only cinchona febrifuge was manufactured; but just before 1880 Dr. King, who was then Superintendent, initiated the policy of converting the plantation from one in which red bark trees, poor in quinine, preponderated, into one of quinine-yielding species. In pursuance of this policy, the yellow-bark quinine-yielding species par excellence (Cinchona Calisaya or Ledgeriana) was planted out in gradually increasing numbers, together with a quinine which appeared spontaneously on the plantation about this time, yielding a natural hybrid between Cinchona succirubra and Cinchona officinalis. This situation was pushed on with such vigour that, whereas in 1880 there were 4,000,000 red bark trees to 500,000 yellow bark and hybrid trees together, in 1890 there were over 3,000,000 of yellow bark and hybrid to one and a half million of red bark trees, and in 1901 over 2 million yellow bark and hybrid to 200,000 red bark trees.