124 On the Botany of India. 



ford confirmations of its theories. These difficult and expensive 

 researches are beyond the efforts of even the richest and most 

 active individuals ; and the governments, friendly to science, 

 have perceived that their aid was necessary for the encourage-- 

 ment of these efforts, and have in various ways afforded their 

 assistance. Confining ourselves here to botany alone, we have 

 within the last fifty years seen numerous journeys performed by 

 the orders of various governments for the extension of the know- 

 ledge of vegetables, not only with reference to agriculture and 

 medicine, but even for eliciting the mere theoretical knowledge 

 of the laws of vegetable nature. But the best conducted jour- 

 neys commonly make known but a small portion of distant 

 countries, and results much more satisfactory are obtained 

 by the prolonged residences which naturalists may be appointed 

 to make in them. The European nations which have distant 

 colonies might in this respect render the greatest service to na- 

 tural history, and several of them have taken advantage of their 

 position so as to merit the gratitude of the scientific world. We 

 intend to exhibit in a series of articles the principal services 

 which have thus been rendered by France, Spain, Germany, 

 Russia, and other countries ; at present, we shall confine our- 

 selves to those by which the EngUsh East India Company has 

 acquired so many honourable titles to public gratitude. 



Since the period when that company saw its sovereignty es- 

 tabhshed in India with any degree of security, it has directed 

 its attention, both with reference to its own interests, and to 

 those of humanity in general, to the study and cultivation of 

 the plants of that vast country. In March 1768, a botanic gar- 

 den was established by it at Calcutta, under the direction of 

 Colonel II. Kydd. This garden was quickly enriched with 

 valuable plants, by means of a correspondence with all the Euro- 

 peans that had settled in India. There were about three hun- 

 dred species in it, when, in the autumn of 1793, Dr Roxburgh 

 was charged with its superintendence. That botanist estabhshed 

 a more active corrnspondence, and visited himself the coast of 

 Coromandel, and some other provinces of British India. He 

 succeeded in bringing together 8500 species of plants in the 

 Company's garden, and of this number 1510 were previously 

 unknown, and were named and described by him. This Ave 

 learn from the catalogue of the garden printed at Serampore 



