July 189').] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 441 



matically arranged in portfolios. He learned from him too 

 •so to arrange his time that the busy day of a departmental 

 surgeon always atibrded leisure for the study of at least 

 one plant. 



When Cleghorn came to Madras, in 1842, Wight had 

 for some years been allocated to a special office, under the 

 Custom's Department. This, in the near future, developed 

 into the Special Department of the Government of India 

 having cognisance of Agriculture, Eevenue, and Commerce, 

 which includes the Forest Department. In truth, the 

 former garrison surgeon was then busy at the Government 

 Experimental Cotton Farm at Coimbatore. The paper 

 ■already quoted, on hedge plants, so modestly designated 

 as rough botanical notes, abounds in sympathy with the 

 depressed ryot ; trusting that by better hedgerows, in- 

 creasing cultivation, and diminished periodic famines, and 

 by persuasion, patience, and perseverance, the upraising of 

 the downtrodden cultivator of the soil might become to the 

 dominant western race the brightest triumph of peace. 



Cleghorn's special life-work even now stood right to the 

 front, though not by this track. Dr. Gibson, better known 

 as " Daddy Gibson," first appointed Conservator of Forests 

 in 1846, with the view of keeping up the supply of teak 

 for the Bombay Dockyard, is quoted by him in the paper. 

 Before leaving for Europe, in shattered health, Cleghorn 

 made representations on the national injury caused by 

 denuding hill slopes of their forest coverings, as well as 

 by the injurious native system of kumri cultivation. In 

 1848, when he sailed home, suftering shipwreck on the 

 voyage, Colonel, now General Michael, C.S.I. , entered on 

 his duties as Conservator of the Anamala Teak Forests, in 

 the Madras Presidency, where he continued till forced to 

 retire, in 1856, through ill-health, brought on by inde- 

 fatigable exertions. Our invalid, though uncertain of 

 returning to India, had a committee appointed by the 

 British Association, at its Edinburgh meeting, in 1850, to 

 draw up a report on the probable effects, in an economical 

 and physical point of view, of the destruction of tropical 

 forests. The members were Professor Forbes Eoyle, 

 Captain Pi. Baird Smith, Lieutenant-General E. Strachey, 

 and Dr. Cleghorn as convener, who drew up the report. 



