286 



industry to the extension of the gardens, the investigation of the 

 East India Company's vast and then rapidly increasing dominions, 

 and the establishment of a correspondence and exchange of living 

 and dried plants, upon a scale which for magnitude and efficiency 

 has never been surpassed by any scientific establishment whatever. 

 During the first ten years of his incumbency he performed five 

 extensive journeys ; he visited Nepaul, then a terra incognita, in 

 1820-1822, and on his return through the pestilential Tarai, at the 

 foot of the Himalayas, caught a second severe fever that obliged 

 him to go to sea immediately after his arrival at Calcutta. This 

 opportunity he turned to the best account, and as soon as he could 

 rise from his bed and superintend his staff, he commenced diligently 

 investigating the botany of the Bay of Bengal, Penang, and the 

 Straits of Malacca. 



Within less than another year Dr.Wallich was personally exploring 

 the kingdom of Oude and the provinces of Rohilcund and Kamaon, 

 reporting on their forests and other vegetable products ; and in 

 1826-1827, he accompanied the British embassy to Burmah, visited 

 Ava, and after that the newly-acquired provinces of Tenasserim and 

 Martaban. Throughout this period he employed collectors in eastern 

 Bengal, and in other parts of India which he could not himself visit ; 

 and he communicated (in the name of the Hon. E. I. Company) the 

 products of these labours with a lavish liberality to the botanists of 

 Europe, not only in the form of collections, but of voluminous 

 observations and drawings. 



Repeated attacks of illness obliged Dr. Wallich to repair to 

 England, where he arrived on furlough in 1828, and applied 

 himself assiduously for four years to the publication of his great 

 work " Plantae Asiaticae rariores," in three volumes folio, and 

 the distribution of his enormous collections to the principal public 

 and private museums in Europe. This distribution, of which a 

 catalogue was lithographed by his own hand, constitutes the most 

 valuable contribution of its kind ever made to botanists, and is of 

 itself a sufficient monument of one man's devotion to science. 



Dr. Wallich returned to India in 1832, when it soon became 

 apparent that his constitution was completely undermined by inces- 

 sant labour of both mind and body. For several years he conducted 

 the garden correspondence with his wonted zeal and vigour, and 



