IV INTRODUCTION. 
Cathcart residing at Garden Reach, opposite the Botanic Gardens. He had quitted Dorjiling a few weeks 
before, and the period of his service having expired, he proposed to leave India in the followmg month, 
sending the drawings to me, but spending some months on the Continent himself. He desired me to retain 
them till his arrival, when he proposed to expend £1000 on illustrating a work similar to the Sikkim- 
Himalaya Rhododendrons, and to distribute it to the principal botanists and scientific establishments in 
Europe, and for this work I had offered to contribute the descriptive matter from my own manuscripts 
and. collections. 
On the 7th of February I saw my friend for the last time; he signalled a happy voyage to me from 
the balcony of his house, as the steamer rapidly bore me down the Hoogly on my homeward way. He 
followed me to Europe, but not to England; for he died suddenly of apoplexy, at Lausanne, in Switzerland, 
on the 8th of July, 1851, in his forty-ninth year. 
It remains to record my obligations to my late friend’s family for that liberal assistance without which 
I could not have undertaken the present work ; and to the many friends who have come forward as subscribers 
to it. Science is not yet self-supporting ; it requires the countenance of amateurs no less than the severe 
studies of proficients to ensure its progress. Works like the present must appeal to the lovers of art and 
horticulture, the latter of whom are mainly indebted to the labours of Botanists for the objects that afford 
them their greatest and most rational delight. Innumerable are the opportunities enjoyed by the cultivators 
of Horticulture and Botany of mutually aiding one another: indeed, neither pursuit can exist alone, and 
still less can they be advanced independently. It has been one of my purest sources of gratification to find, 
that the fruits of my own Himalayan journeys (in the prosecution of which abstract science was my primary 
object) have been both appreciated by the lovers of gardening, and have afforded to Mr. Fitch the means 
of executing, in the “ Illustrations of Sikkim Rhododendrons,” a series of drawings that have been justly 
pronounced as of unrivalled excellence in an artistic pomt of view. 
No pains have been spared by the same incomparable Botanical Artist to render the Plates now pub- 
lished. worthy of imitation, as combining scientific accuracy in the truthful representation of details with 
graceful grouping in perspective, judgment in shading and colouring, and freedom with delicacy in drawing 
upon stone. 
