MUTIS, Jose Celestino (moo-tiss), Spanish botanist, born in Cadiz, 6 April, 1732; died in Santa Fe de Bogote, 12 September, 1808. After studying mathematics he went through the medical course at the College of San Fernando, in Cadiz, was graduated at Seville, and appointed in 1757 professor of anatomy in Madrid. In this city he became acquainted with Linnaeus, who later called him "phytologorum americanorum princeps," and named several plants in his honor. Mutis accompanied Don Pedro Mesia de la Cerda as his physician in 1760 to his viceroyalty of New Granada. He was appointed professor of mathematics in the College of Nuestra Sefora del Rosario, and was the first to teach, in the viceroyalty, the Copernican system, which had been prohibited by the Spanish government. Desiring to examine the plants of the hot region, and to visit the silver-mines of Mariquita, he left Bogota and resided first in La Montuosa between Giron and Pamplona, and from 1777 till 1782 in Real del Sapo and Mariquita. At La Montuosa he began his "Flora de Nueva Granada," on which he bestowed forty years of labor, but which remained unfinished at his death. Mutis was the first to discover in New Granada and distinguish the various species of cinchona or Peruvian bark. He has described them and their different properties in one of his works, " El arcane de la Quina, o sea la historia de los greoles de la quina." Among the most important plants that he discovered and classified are the ipecacuanha of the river Magdalena, the toluifera, and the myroxylum, from which are extracted the balsam of Tolu and of Peru, the tea-plant of Bogota, and the wintera granadensis. Mutis also made known a plant called "Bejuco del Guaco," which is an antidote for serpent-bites. In 1786 he discovered a quicksilver-mine near Ibaguaviejo. At his solicitation, with that of the viceroy, the court of Madrid founded a royal academy of natural history, with the name of Expedicion Botanica, and Mutis was appointed its director. The academy first had its seat at Mariquita and afterward at Bogota. Mutis obtained the co-operation of the viceroy Mendinueta in the construction in 1802 of an astronomical observatory in Bogota, and the first expenses were met with the money from the sale of quinine that Mutis had sent to Cuba. All the manuscripts and drawings of the great work of Mutis, the "Flora de Nueva Granada," were sent by Morillo to Spain. He was a member of the Jardin botanico de Madrid, the Sociedad Vascongada, and the Academy of sciences of Stockholm.