62 MEMOIR OF 



should be content to pass through the rest of my life 

 without aiming at any thing farther, beyond the oc- 

 cupation of my spare time in promoting, as far as my 

 humble means and talents admitted, the pursuits of 

 knowledge and science, and the advancement of phi- 

 lanthropic and religious principles." Thus marking 

 out for himself a course of active employment. 



The love of retirement and free intercourse with na- 

 ture, wearied him of London, and soon after his arrival 

 in England he purchased the estate of Highwood, not 

 far from town, which he intended should be his head 

 quarters. His time was in the mean time actively 

 employed in arranging from recollection parts of his 

 researches in the East, and in examining what he had 

 been enabled to collect during his short stay at Ben- 

 coolen after the burning of the Fame. He now ex- 

 pressed his opinion of the possibility of a Society 

 somewhat upon the plan of the Garden of Plants, 

 and enlisted in his cause the services of Sir Hum- 

 phry Davy. To his cousin, in the full enthusiasm of 

 success, he writes : " I am much interested at pre- 

 sent in establishing a grand Zoological Collection in 

 the Metropolis, with a Society for the introduction 

 of living animals, bearing the same relations to 

 Zoology as a science, that the Horticultural does to 

 Botany. We hope to have 2000 subscribers, at 

 L. 2 each ; and, it is farther expected, we may go far 

 beyond the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. Sir Hum- 

 phrey Davy and myself are the projectors. And 

 while he looks more to the practical and immediate 



