44 PHOCEEDINGS OF THE 



his office. The renovation of the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, 

 which liaci been wrecked by the two great cyclones of 1864 and 

 1S67, and which now under King rose to new beauty and to 

 greater importance than it ever had, and the successful manage- 

 ment of the Cinchona department, which in its ultimate effects 

 became a blessing for the whole of the Indian Empire and even 

 beyond its boundaries, were triumphs of organisation. Both tasks 

 taxed his time heavily ; but when they were fairly accomplished, 

 the opportunity had come for work which must have been all the 

 time very near to his heart. A number of sliort papers on species 

 of Ficus published in 1886 and 1887 were the forerunners of the 

 magnificent monograph of the Eicus of the Indo-Malayan and 

 Chinese countries, with which in ]8S8 he initiated that splendid 

 and sumptuously illustrated serial the 'Annals of the Eoval 

 Botanic Garden, Calcutta.' Other memoirs on the Indian Ario- 

 carims, Quercus, Castanojjsis, Magnoliacese, Myristica, Auonacete, 

 on new and rare Indian plants and the Orchids of the Sikkim 

 Himalaya, some of them in collaboration with other authors, 

 followed, the illustrations filling near on 1300 plates. Shortly 

 after the appearance of the first volume of the Calcutta ' Annals ' 

 King started the " Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula," 

 to be published at intervals in the ' Journal ' of the Asiatic Society 

 of Bengal. Under the disguise of a modest title the " Materials " 

 is actually what otherwise would be called a " Flora " of the 

 Malayan Peninsula, that is a systematic catalogue with full descrip- 

 tions of all the species known from that rich and interesting area. 

 He was not allowed to finish the task. At the time of his retire- 

 ment the publication had proceeded to the middle of the Calyci- 

 flor£e. After his return to Europe he continued the work as far as 

 his health would permit, and thus finished Calyciflorae practically 

 unaided by others. From 1902 onwards, however, he made 

 arrangements for collaboration with Mr. J. S. Gamble for the 

 CoroUiflorse, while the Monocotyledonete were taken over by 

 Mr. Eidley. The magnitude of the task is apparent from the fact 

 that King alone is responsible for the enumeration and description 

 of over 1660 species. The enormous progress of our knowledge of 

 the flora of the Malayan Peninsula would not have been possible 

 but for the fact that King was not satisfied with the old collections 

 in the Calcutta Herbarium and chance contributions, but had paid 

 collectors in the Peninsula, such as Kunstler and Scortechini, 

 \\hose memory he perpetuated in his ever generous way by 

 dedicating to them a very great number of new species. His 

 system of organised collecting, however, was not confined to the 

 Malayan Peninsula. Almost from the beginning of his administra- 

 tion of the Calcutta Garden, he provided for the sending out of 

 trained native collectors into such districts as appeared to him 

 most promising; and when in 1891 the office of the Botanical 

 Survey of India was established and placed under his directorship, 

 he seized at the idea of so coordinating: the efforts of the botanical 



