LINNEAK SOCIETT OP LOXDOX. 43 



Hospital, he was sent to Central India and Eajputana, wiiere he 

 began field work as a botanist and zoologist as far as was 

 compatible with his medical duties. His botanical inclinations 

 and knowledge soon singled him out for the career which he 

 had at heart. In 1868 he was temporarih' entrusted with the 

 administration of the Botanic Garden at Saharanpur, and sub- 

 sequently entered the Indian Forest Service in the Xorth-West 

 Provinces (now Cnited Provinces), with his headquarters at Dehra 

 Dun. His stay there was not of long duration, as in 1S71 he was 

 appointed successor to Dr. Thomas Anderson in the super- 

 intendentship of the Eoyal Botanic Gardens at Calcutta and of 

 Cinchona Cultivation in Bengal, taking over at the same time the 

 duties of a Professor of Botanj' at the Medical College in Calcutta. 

 To these duties were added in 1S91 those of Director of the 

 Botanical Survey of India, a new post just then created. King 

 continued to hold all these offices until, in 1895, he retired from 

 the Professorship in the Medical College of Bengal. This 

 exhausted, however, by no means the sphere of his amazing 

 activity, as he also served on the Committee of tlie Management 

 of the Zoological Garden at Calcutta, on the Board of Alsitors of 

 the Engineering College of Bengal, as a Trustee (and for some 

 time Chairman) of the Indian Museum, and since 1894 as President 

 of the Central Committee appointed by Government to investigate 

 the indigenous drugs of India. He retired in 1905. A severe 

 illness during the last year of his stay in India greatly impaired 

 his health, and after his I'eturn to England he found himself from 

 year to year more and more obliged to abstain from work and to 

 seek the protection of the sunny sliores of the Eiviera, \\here he 

 suddenly succumbed to a severe attack of his illness. 



It is difficult not to underrate the many-sided activity of this 

 botanist, administrator and organiser, who will always stand in 

 the front rank among those who have helped to open the treasure- 

 house of the plant world of India. The long list of his publica- 

 tions, in ]^\o. 4 of the Kew Bulletin for 1909, gives, although 

 running over three and a half pages, after all only an inadequate 

 idea of it. Chronologically arranged, it begins with two zoological 

 papers, one on the lion of Aboo, the other on the birds of the 

 Goona District (Central Provinces), both published in 1863. 

 Although kept within a narrow compass they are models of 

 singularly unpretending and yet lucid and to-the-point diction, and 

 all betray acute power of observation. Of a similar character is 

 his first botanical paper, " Xotes on the Famine Foods of Marwar," 

 published in the following year; but here we have in addition to 

 the merits mentioned the display of a great talent for coordinating 

 facts and the application of their bearing on problems of practical 

 life. His publications during the next six or seven years when he 

 moved to Saharanpur and Dehra Dun, and finally to Calcutta, 

 reflect the same practical sense and the elasticity with which he 

 knew to subordinate his personal inclinations to the exigencies of 



