156 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
Packets of seeds have been received from the Royal Botanic Garden 
at the Mauritius, and from similar establishments in India; and a 
valuable collection is expected to arrive shortly from a gentleman re- 
siding at Sydney, New South Wales. . 
Care is taken to keep up a good supply of young plants to meet the 
demand, both of fruit-trees and of ornamental species ; and every pos- 
sible addition is made to the number of desirable kinds for distribution. 
A considerable addition has been made to the Herbarium, of new 
and interesting plants, collected during two excursions into the jungle. 
Most of these I have been enabled to have sketched whilst they were 
in a fresh state, from being allowed to employ an Assistant Draftsman, 
agreeably with the request made in my last Report. 
Thinking it very desirable that this establishment should possess 
specimens of the various vegetable productions of the island, I have 
commenced the formation of a Museum, to comprise specimens of woods, 
gums, fibres, starches, and other substances; intending also, in order 
that these productions may be known in England, to forward duplicates 
of the same to the new Museum attached to the Royal Botanic Garden 
at Kew; and to distribute other spare specimens in a way most likely 
to promote the interests of the Colony. Such a collection as I have 
indicated will prove of much value here, in connection with a well-ar- 
ranged Herbarium, for reference to the species producing the respective 
substances ; and it will give additional interest to the valuable collection 
of drawings now in this library, and which are daily being added to. 
To Dr. Wight of Coimbatore, the talented author of various works 
on Indian Botany, I have again to express my obligations for much 
assistance in furnishing me with the names of many of the plants I 
have sent him, which had been already described; thus saving me 
the time and labour of searching out this information from books and 
other sources. 
The publication of a Flora of Ceylon is kept constantly in view, and 
I am preparing materials for it; but in the present state of the science 
of botany this requires a vast amount of research, and to be properly 
and usefully, cannot be hurriedly, accomplished. It is my intention 
however, before very long, to publish some short general account of the 
contents of the Herbarium, which now comprises between two and 
three thousand species of indigenous flowering-plants and ferns. In 
‘Hooker’s Journal of Botany’ I have recently published descriptions 
