Nov. 1909.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 47 
as superintendent of the Botanic Gardens at Saharanp ur 
in the North-West Provinces—no doubt much more con- 
genial work,—and from this he passed to the Indian Forest 
Service. Then in 1871 the superintendentship of the 
Royal Botanie Gardens at Caleutta, and of the Indian 
Government’s cinchona-planting experiments in Bengal, as 
well as the professorship of botany in the Medical College 
at Caleutta, fell vacant, and Dr. King was appointed to 
these offices. It was no light duty that had been placed 
in his hands. Cyclones of earlier years had reduced the 
gardens at Calcutta to a most dilapidated condition, and 
the Government's cinchona plantations had been but a 
doubtful experiment. The beneficent Government of 
India, however, made funds available to Dr. King, and 
in a comparatively short time the work of a master- 
hand was seen. The gardens were restored and _ re- 
modelled, glass-houses, palm-house, and herbarium build- 
ings were provided, and the gardens began to possess 
all the charm and efficiency for which they are now so 
justly famed. Im a similarly successful way Dr. King 
tackled the difficulties which had attended the cultivation 
of the cmechona, and by his skill and administrative 
ability he enabled the Indian Government to provide for 
India, and to place within the reach of the poorest natives 
the necessary remedies obtainable from the cinchona bark. 
In 1876 Dr. King published a manual of cinchona culti- 
vation in India, and this is the standard work on the 
subject. 
Besides the work of these years—no lght task—Dr. 
King was able to do much valuable botanical work, assisting 
Sir Joseph Hooker with voluminous material for his work 
on the flora of British India. In later years, when leisure 
was more easily got, Dr. King published important eon- 
tributions to botanical literature. Largely through the 
liberality of the Government of Bengal, he was enabled to 
commence the “ Journal of the Calcutta Botanie Gardens,’ 
which has contained numerous contributions from his pen. 
Monographs were published, including that of the now 
notably commercially and financially important genus of 
Ficus, and also other important genera of plants, most of 
those being of economic importance. At the same time he 
