69 
connected with cytogamic plants. Acting on the advice of Sir 
William Hooker, then Director of Kew, which was strongly 
supported by Dr. Dickie, it was King’s intention to follow the 
example of Dr. (now Sir) Joseph Hooker and enter the Naval 
Medical Service. Before the close of his academical career, 
however, the Government of India, who since 1860 had ceased to 
grant commissions in the Indian Medical Service, once more opened 
the ranks of that service to young medical men. Influenced by the 
advice of Professor Harvey, the talented occupant of the chair of 
Materia Medica, who shared Dickie’s estimate of his abilities, 
King decided to forego his earlier intention and entered the Indian 
Medical Service on 2nd October, 1865. At the close of the 
preliminary course of study at Netley, prescribed young 
military medical officers, King was posted to the Bengal Presidency. 
It is of interest to note that he was entrusted by the Director of 
Kew with the care of the first Ipecacuanha plant to reach India ; 
this he delivered in safety to the Superintendent of the Royal 
Botanic Garden, at Calcutta, on reaching that port in March, 1866. 
His Indian service commenced at the General Hospital, Calcutta, 
but he was shortly afterwards transferred, as house Surgeon, to the 
Medical College Hospital and after some time was posted to 
military medical service in Central India and Rajputana, where at 
Goona, Ajmir and Mount Abu, he devoted his leisure to excellent 
work as a field-naturalist. From this military duty he was deputed, 
in December, 1868, to act temporarily as superintendent of the 
Botanic Garden at Saharanpur in the North-west (now the United) 
Provinces ; after this duty was over he was induced to enter the 
Indian Forest Service under the same Government, when he was 
put in charge of a forest circle, the headquarters of which were at 
ehra Dun. 
While thus employed he was, in 1871, selected by the Secretary 
of State for India as successor to Dr, Thomas Anderson, whose 
untimely death in October, 1870, had rendered vacant the Super- 
intendentship of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, and of 
Cinchona Cultivation in Bengal as well as the Professorship of 
Botany at the Medical College, Calcutta. 
The task King had to face was a heavy one. ‘T'wo cyclones of 
extraordinary severity in 1864 and again in 1867 had reduced 
every public and private garden in and around Calcutta to a 
miserably dilapidated state. The Botanic Gardens both as a 
scientific centre and as a place of public resort had practically to 
be renovated, and the work involved afforded ample scope for 
ing’s powers of organisation. The Cinchona plantations in 
British Sikkim, established by Dr. Anderson, whose life was 
practically sacrificed to the zeal with which he performed this 
duty, had reached the critical stage at which it was necessary to 
determine whether the extraction of the alkaloids of Cinchona 
bark on a commercial scale was an economic possibility. — Funds 
were required to the perfecting of King’s designs in both 
directions. That these were readily available gives ample proof 
oth of the enlightened liberality of the Government of Bengal 
and of the confidence which King’s administrative gifts inspired in 
the officials under whom he served. In the course of his operations 
