4 DR. HOOKER’S MISSION TO INDIA. 
Dur y short stay, of less than a month, at Calcutta, I was 
fully aon ed in preparing for an excursion with Mr. Williams 
of the Geological Survey, who was about to move his camp from the 
Dummoodah valley coal-fields to Bidjegur on the banks of the Soane. My 
time was spent partly at Government-House and partly at Sir Lawrence 
Peel s residence. The former I was kindly invited to consider as my 
ndian home: an honour which I appreciate the more highly, and 
which was the more gratifying, because the invitation was accompanied 
with the assurance that I should have entire freedom to follow my own 
pursuits, and the advantages which such a position afforded me were, I 
need not say, of no ordinary kind. 
. Sir Lawrence Peel's magnificent gardens proved a constant source of 
pleasure : they are advantageously situated close to the Botanic Gardens, 
immediately fronting them indeed, with the Hooghly between. 
Sir Lawrence, you know, is an ardent horticulturist, and his gardens 
are quite unrivalled amongst the private ones of India : his hospitality, 
too, is proverbial, and he spared no pains to make me acquainted with 
all the horticultural peculiarities of India. 
At the Botanic Gardens I received every assistance from Dr 
M‘Lelland, who procured drying paper for me and all that I should 
require for collecting en route : he himself was very busy, superintending 
the publication of poor Griffith’s papers and drawings, of which latter 
the garden artists were preparing copies on lithographic pa The 
published parts of the Botanical matter will have reached you balam 
this. What will follow are certainly done from better executed origi- 
nals, some of them indeed excellent; for Griffith seems to have im- 
proved very much latterly. In all cases the artists make accurate 
copies, the defects, of course, included; and I believe this is the best 
way to proceed, when it is determined to publish an author’s post- 
humous works comp : 
Of the Gardens Gani, it is exceedingly difficult to speak : the 
changes have been so very great, and from a state with which I had 
no acquaintance. That there has been a great want of judgment in the 
alterations that have taken place since Dr. Wallich’ 
clear. 
The best view of the Botanic Garden is from that of my hospitable 
friend, Sir Lawrence Peel, immediately on the other side of the river. 
Suppose me now looking across the Hooghly, with as beautiful a river 
s time, is most 
