ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 157 



their growth ; in fact, all particulars according to his own 

 procedure. 



Whether he received any acknowledgment at the time 

 I forget; but a few months afterwards the Government, 

 through its Forest Department, issued orders directing all 

 Forest Officers to start upon the trial cultivation of ipecacu- 

 anha forthwith, and forwarded to each a copy of my hus- 

 band's pamphlet, with the comment that its most valuable 

 contents and information were only lately to hand ; adding, 

 moreover, that as an incentive to zeal on the part of the 

 officers concerned, a reward would be assigned to the first 

 man successful ! This communication was received in due 

 course by F., who, though in the beginning he had very 

 likely been vexed at the slighting notice taken of his action, 

 had long forgotten it, and could now afford to laugh. He 

 simply wrote up again, through his chief, the Conservator 

 of Forests, claiming the ' valuable ' pamphlet as his own, 

 and forwarding photographs of his plants, now thriving as 

 established facts in the Experimental Garden. 



How this pamphlet came to be printed without his name 

 at the bottom was a mystery then, and remained one — at 

 any rate to us. No reward was forthcoming ; indeed, it 

 would have been a somewhat nice question as to how to 

 award it, F. being beforehand with them all, so the diffi- 

 culty was got over by dropping the subject. 



A government, though composed of never so soaring 

 intellects, can as a body be very dense sometimes. A 

 ludicrous instance occurred when F. was once directed to 

 further the cultivation of nutmegs rather than of mace — 

 mace being the mesh-like coating surrounding the nutmeg ! 



Two other distinguishing features of the locality were 

 pineapples and monkeys, and these were not so uncon- 

 nected with each other as might at first sight appear. 



The wild pineapples were of a rough sort, though abun- 

 dant ; quantities of them were therefore transplanted to 



