338 TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS 



The vast extent of the collections and the amount of labour 

 to be expended upon them at home appears from the following : 



Thomson's collections went home in April by the ' Welling- 

 ton * in 28 boxes, directed to the India House. One box 

 contains his books ; he gave the whole collection to the 

 ' India House,' being unable to pay the carriage of his own 

 private ones, formed previous to the Thibet mission, to 

 Calcutta. If Government do not do something, nothing 

 can come of either Tom's or my collections ; they cannot 

 even be housed without. The collection you will receive (I 

 hope have received) per ' Queen ' will form at the outside 

 one quarter of the bulk of what I shall have, and we are now 

 packing in much larger paper layer over layer of plants to 

 suffocation. How Bentham would storm, I often think, 

 but we can neither afford paper, nor room, nor carriage. 

 Luckily they are beautifully dried and all large specimens, 

 but the separation will require great space, time, and un- 

 remitted labor. 



We left the hills on the 10th, and I had the pleasure of 

 seeing all stowed safe away in a large boat hired to send all 

 to Falconer's from Punduah. The dried plants in 70 bales 

 are camphored and put up like bales of cotton in gunny ^ 

 tight and dry. I could get no boxes. The woods, Palms, 

 Bamboos, &c., are similarly put up, but, being very large, 

 some 10 feet, they got a ducking going down the hill on 

 men's backs. I hope none are injured and they had all 

 dried when I followed them. Seven Ward's cases are fuU 

 of Palms, Pines, a few Oaks and Larch, Nepenthes, &c. 

 The Palms look splendidly ; amongst them a new species 

 of Wallichia, 20 feet high. There are also boxes with smaller 

 things and bottles with fruits and flowers of more than 

 800 species of plants in spirits. 



As to the Calami and Bamboos, I ticketed them, wrapping 

 the tickets up in folds of paper, but I doubt their surviving ; 

 and I do not see how they can be made available for the 

 museum, except by Thomson or myself. The same may be 

 said of the woods, tree-ferns, &c., which can only be worked 

 up with the herbarium, and that will be a work of great 

 time and trouble. I wish very much that the Government 



^ A coarse material used for sacking, made from jute fibre. 



