Linnean Society. 47 
sive collection ; and having joined Major Pemberton at Goalpara, tra- 
versed with him above 400 miles of the Bootan country, from which 
he returned to Calcutta about the end of June 1839. In November 
of the same year he joined the army of the Indus in a scientific ca- 
pacity, and penetrated, after the subjugation of Cabool, beyond the 
Hindoo Khoosh into Khorassan, from whence, as well as from Aft- 
ghanistan, he brought collections of great value and extent. During 
these arduous journeys his health had several times suffered most 
severely, and he was more than once reduced by fever to a state of 
extreme exhaustion ; but up to this time the strength of his consti- 
tution enabled him to triumph over the attacks of disease, and the 
energy of his mind was so great, that the first days of convalescence 
found him again as actively employed as ever. 
On his return to Calcutta in August 1841, after visiting Simla and 
the Nerbudda, he was appointed to the medical duties at Malacca ; 
but Dr. Wallich having proceeded to the Cape for the re-establish- 
ment of his health, Mr. Griffith was recalled in August 1842 to take, 
during his absence, the superintendence of the Botanic Garden near 
Calcutta, in conjunction with which he also discharged the duties of 
Botanical Professor in the Medical College to the great advantage of 
the students.. Towards the end of 1844 Dr. Wallich resumed his 
functions at the Botanic Garden. In September Mr. Griffith mar- 
ried Miss Henderson, the sister of the wife of his brother, Captain 
Griffith, and on the 11th of December he quitted Calcutta to return 
to Malacca, where he arrived on the 9th of January in the present 
year. On the 31st of the same month he was attacked by hepatitis, 
and notwithstanding every attention on the part of the medical of- 
ficer who had officiated during his absence and who fortunately still 
remained, he gradually sunk under the attack, which terminated 
fatally on the 9th of February. ‘‘ His constitution,” says his at- 
tached friend, Mr. MacClelland, in a letter to Dr. Horsfield, ‘‘ seemed 
for the last two or three years greatly shattered, his energies alone 
remaining unchanged. Exposure during his former journeys and 
travels laid the seeds of his fatal malady in his constitution, while 
his anxiety about his pursuits and his zeal increased. He became 
care-worn and haggard in his looks, often complaining of anomalous 
symptoms, marked by an extreme rapidity of pulse, in consequence 
of which he had left off wine for some years past, and was obliged 
to observe great care and attention in his diet. In Affghanistan he 
was very nearly carried off by fever, to which he had been subject in 
his former travels in Assam. No government ever had a more de- 
voted or zealous servant, and I impute much of the evil consequences 
to his health to his attempting more than the means at his disposal 
enabled him to accomplish with justice to himself.” 
The most important of Mr. Griffith’s published memoirs are con- 
tained in the ‘Transactions of the Linnean Society. Previous to 
starting on his mission to Assam, he communicated to the Society 
the first two of a series of valuable papers on the development of the 
vegetable ovulum in Santalum, Loranthus, Viscum, and some other 
plants, the anomalous structure of which appeared calculated to 
