I 



BURDEN OF INDIAN COLLECTIONS 361 



period to the ' Icones Plantarum ' (Sir William's series of 

 illustrations of remarkable and interesting plants), the * Kew 

 Journal of Botany,' the Gardeners' Chronicle , and the * Pro- 

 ceedings of the Linnean Society,' two of these monographs 

 being written in collaboration with Thomson.^ 



The work finally involved the arranging and identification 

 of their vast number of specimens so that the duplicates might 

 be distributed among other public and private collections. 

 The heavy burden of this task finds a constant echo in the 

 letters of these years, the more so as it was suddenly doubled. 

 For, to quote the obituary in the Kew Bulletin : 



Before this work had been completed the Indian collec- 

 tions of Falconer, Grifi&th, and Heifer, made over to Kew 

 from the cellars of the East India House, had to be dealt 

 with in the same manner. The latter task had not been 

 completed when Thomson departed, but another smaller 

 though very important one was successfully accomplished. 

 Besides the three collections mentioned, the residuum of the 

 Indian Herbarium distributed by Wallich on behalf of the 

 Honourable East India Company was also entrusted to Kew. 

 The distribution of this great collection took place between 

 1828 and 1832 ; there was consequently no set of its plants 

 at Kew. In this Kew did not stand alone ; the herbarium 

 attached to the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, at whose 

 cost and for whose benefit the collection had been brought 

 together, was in like case. By a happy chance the friends 

 were thus enabled to fill more or less satisfactorily a great 

 hiatus in the herbaria of both gardens ; a set, fairly complete, 

 so far at least as the plants collected by Wallich himself are 

 concerned, was made up and laid into the herbarium at Kew, 

 while a similar set was taken to Calcutta by Thomson (who 

 now succeeded to the Superintendentship there). 



Thus in April 1857 Bentham is told, 



I am still struggling on with the general arrangement of 

 the Herb. Ind. roughly into species and have only got down 

 to Monopetalae. The number of sheets and specimens is 

 frightful. I toil on and to Httle effect. 



^ See list of works, Appendix B. 



