65 
very glad when their efforts meet with some success. I can honestly 
say, as far as I know, that the last thing they expect to get is the 
smallest credit for it. I find myself now in front of a stupendous 
piece of plate which Sir John Anderson suggests I should take 
away under my arm. I confess that I find the situation rather 
embarrassing, but I am very much comforted when I read the 
inscription because nothing is more impossible than for a servant 
of the Crown to receive any substantial recognition of anything he 
has done. What Kew did in this matter was nothing more than its 
ordinary routine work. hat institution now lives in the third 
century of its existence. As I have reminded my neighbour, the 
onsul General for Germany, it was founded in the 18th ceutury 
by a princess of his nation, who, to adopt the words of Mr. Gladstone, 
“cast her aspirations into the future” of her adopted country 
when she founded Kew. We have done many things in the past 
at Kew. en I say “we,” I speak of a considerable procession 
of predecessors in the 18th century. _We—that is Kew—+tried in 
the same way as we engaged in the rubber enterprise to transfer the 
bread fruit from the Pacific to the West Indies. The mutiny of 
the Bounty grew out of that attempt, and there was a chivalrous 
predecessor of Mr. Wickham in the Kew gardener, who stuck to 
the captain, and died from exposure in the boat. Peace has its 
victims as well as war. Well, we succeeded with regard to rubber. 
T can assure you that on that 14th of June, when Mr. Wickham 
arrived at Kew in a hansom cab with his precious bag of seeds, not 
even the wildest imagination could have contemplated its result in 
this banquet to-night. What we did was done in the most ordinary 
and routine way. I was the lieutenant then. My chief, who is now 
in his 95th year, and who has the vigour of youth, but is not 
allowed to dine out, would have enjoyed very much to be present 
here to-night ; but there is one whom I miss, who was the prime 
mover in the enterprise—one to whom your cheer should go up— 
Sir Clements Markham. (Applause.) He was the prime mover 
also in introducing the Cinchona plant into India and giving India 
the advantage of quinine. He travelled in South America, and I 
think that out of quinine the idea came to him that he would round 
off that part of his life’s work by giving to the East rubber as 
well, When I tell you that owing to Markham the natives of 
Bengal for a farthing can get 5 grains of quinine at any post office, 
you will realise what he did with the help of Kew in introducing 
the Cinchona tree into India. In the same humdrum way we did 
the same with rubber. I saw Mr. Wickham’s seeds planted. We 
knew it was touch and go, because it was likely the seeds would not 
germinate. I remember well on the third day, going into the 
propagating house where they were planted and seeing that by good 
luck the seed was germinating. So rapidly did the plants grow— 
1,900 of them—that we had to have special cases made. n 
August 12th, 38 cases went out to Ceylon on a P. and O. steamer 
in charge of a gardener, but I will not bore you with other details. 
You yourselves are able to judge of the results and you can appre- 
ciate the advantage of Kew taking up a matter of this kind. ‘The 
whole expense of initiation, and the whole burden of finance from 
first to last, was borne by the India Office, and the people to whom 
rr E 
