398 FINAL BOTANICAL WOEK 



Moreover, the further he proceeded in this favourite field, 

 whether surveying Indian botany as a whole or monographing 

 one corner of it, the more he was disappointed by the slow 

 progress that seemed to have been made since the work of the 

 pioneer botanists and his own first effort to co-ordinate this. 

 Brilliant exceptions there were, and Calcutta especially had 

 upheld its old reputation, 1 but 1907 and 1908 find him lament- 

 ing that botany is almost dead in India. To the fellow labourers 

 in his uphill task he deplored time after time the general lack 

 of enterprise that left large areas of India still botanically 

 unexplored, the futility of entrusting collection to the ' mere 

 haymakers whom you magnify into botanical collectors,' 

 the imperative need of taking a given area and working out 

 the varieties and distribution of important species on the 

 spot. 



It is really too bad that the few Palms of the most popu- 

 lous and accessible parts of India should be botanically iu 

 confusion. One would suppose India to be an inaccessible 

 country. (1901.) 



The unexpected appearance of no less than five new 

 Balsams in a supplementary collection from the north made 

 in 1905 shows 



how carelessly the country had been herborised, I cannot 

 say botanised, for really the mere collecting without notes 

 of any kind, even of colour of flower, is not botanising. 

 (February 1906.) 



To Captain Gage 2 he writes on March 8, 1909 : 



x * Beccari's Calami will be a magnificent tribute to the energy of Indiai 

 botanists in having such diabolical plants collected in a condition for accural 

 description. 



1 The Annals of Calcutta Garden are magnificent ; they are an imperishabl< 

 record of the energy of King in starting the series.' (To Capt. Gage, April 17 

 1909.) 



* Andrew Thomas Gage (1871), M.A., M.B., B.Sc, F.L.S. ; Major I.M.S. 

 Director of the Botanical Survey of India ; Superintendent of the Roya 

 Botanical Gardens, Calcutta, since 1906. Educated at the Old Gramma: 

 School and University of Aberdeen, he was Assistant Professor of Botany 

 there 1894-6 ; entered the Indian Medical Service 1897, and was Curator of th< 

 Calcutta Herbarium 1898. He has published various papers on botanica 

 subjects. 



