430 General J\'otkes. 



wild in Upper Assam, within the Company's territories, through an ex- 

 tent of hundreds of miles towards the Chinese frontier station of Yun- 

 nan, where the shrub is cultivated for connnercial purposes. A more 

 splendid discovery has never been made, in matters relating to the com- 

 mercial or agricultural resources of India. A committee of tea culture 

 was appointed early last year, consisting of some of the highest civil 

 officers in Calcutta, some merchants, and two of the most enlightened 

 Hindoos, namely Baboo Redu Radhacant Dih, and Baboo Ramcomul Sen. 

 I am a member also ; and since Mr. Gordon was deputed to China to send 

 round tea seeds and |»lants, as well as Chinese cultivators and manufac- 

 turers, I have acted tor him as secretary to the committee. Our instruc- 

 tions were, to inquire into the practicability of tea being cultivated in 

 Hindostan on an extensive scale^ for the sake of its leaf. This recent 

 discovery of the tea of Upper Assam has placed the views and prospects 

 of the committee on a fooling of almost mathematical certainty. Who 

 would have dreamt of the shrub growing wild so ftir east as 70°.'' Its 

 geograjjhical limits had hitherto, I think, been traced only as far as some- 

 where between 105" and 110" E. Ion. in the northern part of Cochin- 

 China. We have already established tea nurseries in the mountains of 

 Kamoon, i^irmare, and Gurwhal, between the upper parts of the Jumna 

 and the Ganges. A large consignment of bohea tea seeds has already 

 been received from China ; but we have now to look to Assam only for 

 our supplies of seeds ; for, like the seeds of all other varieties of peren- 

 nials, bohea seeds will, in all probability, produce nothing but the com- 

 mon sort. A l)otanical deputation is going to be sent up to Assam, as 

 soon as it is practicable, in order to institute, on the spot, all the inquir- 

 ies that are necessary to render our information resjjecting the nature of 

 the tea there as complete as possible. I am to head the mission, although 

 a more fit person might easily have been found. All my arguments have 

 availed me nothing, and the connnittee have determined that go VVallich 

 must. However, I am to be aided by one or two accomplished botanists 

 of my own recommendation, and they will more than supply my own di- 

 vers and manifold deficiencies. Dr. Wight and Mr. Griffith, two of the 

 most splendid naturalists that ever came to this or any other country, I 

 hope, will accompany me ; I have also named Mr. Nash, a most excellent 

 man, recently come out. I wish my friend Royle was out here ; he 

 would be the man, and he would most undoubtedly have been sent on 

 this duty. Dr. Falconer has charge of the Gurwhal and Sermare nurse- 

 ries, besides the Saharunpoor garden. In matters of pure botany and 

 horticulture, I anticii)ate such a harvest as was never seen before. Think 

 only to herborise under the shade of wild tea trees, in forests never in this 

 world examined before ! 



I have sent to Mr. G. Loddiges the details of a very beautiful consign- 

 ment of growing plants, which he and his worthy brother sent me lately 

 in a hermetically sealedhox (I may almost call it so). I wish you would 

 make mention of this most extraordinary and novel mode in your Maga- 

 zine. I have asked Mr. Loddiges to send you my letter, or an extract 

 from it.— iV. Wallich.—Ib. 



The old double Yelloiv Rose, I find blooms well in the hills of Caer- 

 marthanshire, dressed with bog earth, against a south-east wall ; but it is 

 subject to occasional blight. — Gard. Mag. 



Acacia dealhdta, planted in the open garden in May, 1834, and then 

 about six inches high, measured, at the end of the season, upwards of 

 eleven feet high, with abundance of long lateral shoots, and a stem of 

 considera!)le thickness. It was protected, about half way up its stem, 

 with spruce branches on the approach of winter ; and the severe frost 

 of the the 8th of January, in the present year, killed the plant down to 

 the protected part. — lb. 



