XXXVl PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



new or but imperfectly known, emanating from Dr Eoyle, was 

 the result. The commercial interest of the manufacturing districts 

 was naturally awakened to these raw products ; and the India- 

 house became exposed to inquiries upon the subject, to which no 

 department of that great establishment was at the time com- 

 petent to give a reply. The natural and inevitable result soon 

 followed : an oifice, that of " Correspondence relating to the Vege- 

 table Productions of India," was created for Dr. Eoyle, who had 

 now resigned his medical appointment ; and Leadenhall Street 

 henceforth became the centre of his labours and public usefulness. 

 From this time forward he devoted his whole attention to the 

 development of the productive resources of the country of his 

 birth. Having the entire charge of the correspondence in relation 

 to this most important subject, he was naturally one of the first 

 to be consulted with regard to the Indian Department of the 

 Great Exhibition of 1851, on which he furnished a valuable 

 memoir, which was published in the Appendix No. 3 to the Pre- 

 liminary Report of the Commissioners. In the management of 

 this Exhibition he was appointed one of the Local Commissioners 

 for the City of London, and had the entire charge of the Indian 

 department. The results of his labours on this occasion are too 

 well known to render it necessary to dwell on the skill, energy, 

 and taste which presided over its organization and arrangement. 

 "When the Great Exhibition of Paris took place in 1855, he was 

 again selected to superintend the Oriental department, which 

 was, by his exertions, placed on a scale of truly oriental magni- 

 ficence. For his eminent services on this occasion he received 

 from the Emperor the large honorary medal, together with the 

 decoration of an Officer of the Legion of Honour. Once again 

 his talents were called into requisition in a similar manner, in the 

 organization of the Indian Collection at the Exhibition of Art- 

 Treasures in Manchester in 1857. In the meantime, although 

 so busily occupied in these exhibitions and in the ordinary duties 

 of his office, he had published in 1851 an elaborate work " On the 

 Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India and elsewhere," and 

 had contributed a series of Articles to the ' Penny Cyclopaedia,' and 

 to Dr. Kitto's ' Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature,' and numerous 

 Notices in different Journals, besides Lectures at the Society of 

 Arts and elsewhere, among which were two on the Results of the 

 Great Exhibition, " On the Arts and Manufactures of India," 

 " On Indian Fibres, &c." This latter, when the war with Russia 

 threatened to cut off our supply of the principal fibrous materials 



