330 Journal of Travel and Natural History 



the sanatorium of Landour, in the Himmalayahs. This led him to 

 pass through Suharunpoor, where there was a botanical garden 

 under the charge of Dr Royle, with whom he became very inti- 

 mate, and whom he finally succeeded in 1832. For this important 

 post he was eminently fitted by his previous studies, and by the 

 pecuHar versatility of his mind. The locality itself was most ad- 

 mirably adapted for the study of botany and natural history, it 

 being situated between the Jumna and Ganges, outside the belt of 

 the Terai forest, twenty-five miles distant from the Siwalik hills, and 

 within sight of the Himmalayahs. The rivers, plains, forests, and 

 hills teemed with life of almost every form ; and the varying alti- 

 tudes caused Alpine vegetation to thrive on the hill tops, and to 

 pass insensibly into the products of the tropics on the plains. In 

 this remote station, inhabited at the time by only six European 

 families, and far away from all the appliances necessary for scientific 

 investigation, the young superintendent, then only twenty-three 

 years old, was thrown altogether on his own resources. It was very 

 hard to get philosophical instruments from Europe, and if once 

 broken there were no workshops where they could be repaired. 

 He was obliged, therefore, to have them made by the cunning 

 hands of the native workman under his own eyes, or to forego 

 them altogether. He was equal to the occasion. At one time he 

 might be seen superintending the construction of a glass tube for a 

 barometer, to be used in mountain explorations, out of broken 

 tumblers, distilling mercury out of cinnabar bought in the native 

 market, turning a reservoir for it out of boxwood, and standing 

 over a native blacksmith as he cast and graduated a brass scale, 

 and thus he obtained an instrument amply sufficient for his needs. 

 At another time, when the supply of salad oil ran short, he devised 

 a very good substitute out of the juice of some native tree. Pre- 

 vented from following up his favourite study of osteology by the 

 absence of means of comparison, he ransacked the plains, forests, 

 and rivers in the neighbourhood, and soon formed a very fine 

 museum of comparative osteology. This spirit of indomitable 

 perseverance he carried into everything he undertook. 



He had not been settled in his new duties more than a few 

 months before he began to explore the geology of the sub-Himma- 

 layahs, a work for which he was prepared by his former training 

 under Professor Jameson. He restricted to them the term Siwalik, 

 and defined their range to be from the Indus to the Brahmapootra, 

 in a direction parallel to the Himmalayahs. Between the Jumna and 



