258 
leased to offer for the acceptance of the Society the extensive 
Collection of dried plants preserved in the Museum of the India 
House, take the earliest opportunity of expressing their high 
sense of the distinguished honour conferred _ the Society by 
this unexampled act of liberality. 
The Council, in behalf of the Society, accept with feelings of 
profound gratitude the Collection thus proffered to them, and beg 
to assure the Court that it shall be held as a trust for the general 
benefit of science. 
ouncil cannot avoid expressing their admiration of the 
enlightened policy shown by the Honourable Court of Directors, 
with relation to their collections in natural history, in extending 
the advantage to be derived from them, by the most liberal dis- - 
tribution of specimens be chet the scientific world, and by this 
memorable instance of their munificence, in placing the fruits of 
the labours of Kénig, Roxburgh, Rottler, Russell, Klein, Hamilton, 
Heyne, Wight, Finlayson and Wallich, along with those of the 
immortal Linneus. 
The East India Company, by extending its patronage to those 
distinguished naturalists who have cultivated science in Asia, so 
much to their own honour and to the credit of the service to 
gy they belonged, and by the general use of the rich materials 
its possession, has deeply impressed the members of every 
feasted institution throughout Europe and America with feelings of 
admiration and respect ; and the Council of the Linnean Society 
can only re-echo the voice of general acknowledgment for the 
great services which the Honourable Company has thus rendered 
to the cause of science. 
An example of disinterestedness has been exhibited by the 
Company which has already reflected, and will continue to reflect, 
deserved honour upon them and upon the country, and which 
cannot fail to diffuse a Lines of emulation throughout the world. 
London, June 23rd, 1 
In October 1832 Dr. ‘Wallich addressed letters to the Linnean 
Society, which were read in Council on 6th November, reporting 
that the remainder of his collections had been sent to the Society 
on 29th September and requesting the Council to transmit the best 
set obtainable to the garden at Calcutta 
; know th: 
to the Calcutta Garden. It is, however, interesting to find that this we was 
made and that Wallich, before his return to oe = 1832, ge already realised 
the consequences of the distribution “to vari bodies ie Y ood try 
: “and in Europe” of the “ _ collected Peg celebrated etccala in the 
‘Company’s service, during a series of years, in India” without arranging that 
“the best set obtainable” should be placed in the e Gardpa at Calcutta” at 
whose expense and on whose behalf the bulk of these collections had been 
from the list of oo of its own specim e know that when, in 184 
Wallich returned to Europe and had al heal? - bop peri of doin, ‘what was 
still — to fs od 2 injustice which hg oe committed not — 
e that opportunity. It was left to Hooker and Thomson to do what 
Wallich had left undone (KB, 1912, p. 5), . hae 
