BOTANY. 337 



Ganges, and proceeded to Sikkim. The plants collected during this journey 

 amounted to 1000 species. The summer of 1848, and the greater part of 

 1849, were then spent by Dr. Hooker in the Sikkim and East Nipal Hima- 

 laya, during which time he botanized the whole country from the plains to 

 the Tibetan frontier, with an assiduity that accumulated an herbarium of 

 3,500 species; and in December of that year he was met at Dorjiliiig by Dr. 

 Thomson, who had been botanizing in the plains and mountains of North- 

 West India for seven years previously. Before quitting England, Dr. Hooker 

 had already made a voyage to the south polar seas, with Sir James Clark Ross, 

 in the ill-fated Erebus and Terror, and having published a Flora of the principal 

 antarctic islands in a style of minuteness that signally qualified him for far- 

 ther research, the travelers met upon equal ground, so far as experience and 

 the scientific knowledge of their favorite pursuits were concerned, and re- 

 solved to botanize in company. In May, 1850, Drs. Hooker and Thomson set 

 off together to the Khasia Hills, where the summer was spent, then" joint 

 collection of plants amounting to 3,000 species, and in November of that year 

 they visited Silhet and Cachar, and descending the Megna to the Bay of Ben- 

 gal, proceeded to Chittagong, returning by the Sunderbunds to Calcutta, At 

 Calcutta they embarked for England with an herbarium of 8,000 species of 

 plants, comprising not only many varieties of most of the species, but also 

 man}- individual specimens of most of the varieties. On the arrival of the 

 travelers in England with so complete a collection of the plants of British 

 India, formed as it was with a high philosophic knowledge of the variability 

 of species, accompanied by drawings and dissections, and by voluminous notes 

 indicative of distribution, habit, and structure, botanists were anxious that no 

 time should be lost in making so unprecedented a mass of materials available 

 to science. The enterprising botanizers were not less urgent themselves to 

 publish the fruits of their researches, but the labor of sorting and identifying 

 the named species, and of unraveling the synonomy of each, to say nothing 

 of describing those that were new. presented obstacles which only time and 

 the command of considerable funds would enable them to encounter. The 

 subject was brought before a Committee of the Natural History section of the 

 British Association at the meeting of 1851, and the members were unani- 

 mous in memorializing the Directors of the East India Company for their aid 

 in behalf of the undertaking. The application was, however, unsuccessful, 

 and Drs. Hooker and Thomson have since undertaken the task at their own 

 expense, and as the first product of their labors have published, during the 

 past year, a beautiful volume of 560 pages. v 



To give an idea of the labor of these assiduous botanists in the field, we 

 may mention that the specimens were all ticketed as they were collected, 

 with particulars of locality and elevation, and in Sikkim and the Khasia Hills 

 500 specimens of wood were cut, palm?, bamboos, and tree-ferns being pre- 

 served entire, while colored drawings and dissections of upward of a thousand 

 species were made by Dr. Hooker from the living plants. But the work of 

 collecting material in the field has been surpassed, even thus far, in extent 

 by the labor of analysis in the closet. The number of books and periodicals 

 in which Eastern plants have been described is immense, and all have to bo 



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