On the Botany of India. 363 



of the vast numbers of hothouse plants of which every garden now 

 enjoys the advantage, of late years those valuable trees and beau- 

 tiful shrubs and flowers that, inhabiting the snowy mountains of 

 Nipal, find a congenial climate in Great Britain, have begun to 

 adorn our gardens. Dried specimens continued to be sent home, 

 and in such abundance, that a general distribution was some years 

 since entrusted by the Company to their officers in the museum of 

 the India House, by which the botanists of this country exten- 

 sively benefited. These collections had been chiefly formed by the 

 personal visits of Dr. Wallich to various parts of our Indian pos- 

 sessions. The high lands of Nipal were traversed in 1820 and 

 1821; the islands of Penang and Sincapur were visited soon after- 

 wards; the timber forests of Oude and llohilcund were explored in 

 1825 ; and, finally, the kingdom of Ava, and the coasts of Tenas- 

 serim and Martaban, were the subject of personal investigation by 

 this indefatigable naturalist in 1826 and 1827. Besides this, the 

 Company's residents, plant-collectors, travellers, physicians, and 

 others, all contributed, some (as the late Dr. Jack and Mr. Colebrooke) 

 very extensively, towards the completion of the investigation. The 

 result of these labours has been an accumulation of upwards of 8000 

 species, of which, if allowance be made for a deficiency in the insular 

 species, near 7000 must have been discovered within the last forty 

 years. A portion of these have been made known in the Flora Indica 

 of Carey and Roxburgh ; a further number have been published by 

 several of the working botanists of the day, and fifty were figured by 

 Dr. Wallich in his Tentamen Florae Indira Illustrate. Nothing, how- 

 ever, really worthy of the immense power that had been put in action 

 to collect these materials, had been undertaken, when ill health ren- 

 dered it advisable that the superintendent of the Botanic Garden, 

 Calcutta, should visit England, and it was then determined that his 

 collections should accompany him. In the true spirit of genuine 

 science, collecting nothing for himself alone, and everything for the 

 advantage of his favourite pursuit, the harvest of twenty years had 

 been supposed to have been nearly exhausted by his numerous remit- 

 tances to Europe ; but when it was known that the mere remains of 

 Dr. Wallich's gigantic herbarium occupied nearly forty huge chests, 

 weighing almost thirty tons, and that countless thousands of dupli- 

 cates still remained in his possession, the utmost anxiety was mani- 

 fested to know in what way the East India Company would deter- 

 mine that they should be disposed of. That everything which the 

 most exalted liberality could suggest might be anticipated was by no 

 one doubted, nor has the public expectation been disappointed. 



The same spirit that directed the formation of these collections 

 presided over the councils of the company on their arrival. It was 

 directed that the most select of the new species should be published 

 from the drawings, and that the duplicate specimens should be 

 divided * among the principal public and private museums of 

 Europe and America.' Of the two works that stand at the head of 

 this article, the first is the result of the former part of the plan, and 



