OcTOBER 19, 1899] 
NATURE 
605 
Stewart collected largely, and published in 1869 his ‘‘ Punjab 
Plants,” a book which gives a very imperfect impression of his 
acquirements as a botanist. Sir Dietrich Brandis issued in 
1874 his admirably accurate “‘ Forest Flora of the North-west 
Provinces of India,” illustrated by seventy excellent plates. 
Between the years 1869 and 1873, Colonel Beddome issued his 
‘Flora Sylvatica of the Madras Presidency,” illustrated by 
numerous plates. He also published, between 1869 and 1874, a 
volume of descriptions and figures of new Indian plants, under 
the title ‘‘ Icones Plantarum Indize Orientalis.”” Colonel Bed- 
dome is the only Indian botanist of note, except Griffith, Mr. 
C. B. Clarke and Mr. C. W. Hope, who has written much on 
Indian ferns. His two works, the ‘* Ferns of Southern India ” 
and the ‘‘ Ferns of British India,” published the former in 1863 
and the latter between 1865 and 1870, practically give a sys- 
tematic account, together with excellent figures, of the whole 
fern flora of India. Of these excellent books a condensation 
ina popular and abridged form has also been issued. The 
fourth forest officer who has published contributions to sys- 
tematic botany is Mr. W. A. Talbot, whose ‘‘ List of the Trees, 
Shrubs and Woody Climbers of the Bombay Presidency ” gives 
evidence of much careful research. And the fifthis Mr. J. S. 
Gamble, who, besides amassing at his own expense probably 
the largest private collection of plants ever owned in India, 
has published a systematic account of the Indian Bam- 
buseae, a tribe of grasses which, from the peculiarity of many 
of the species in the matter of flowering. had so long been 
the bane of the Indian agrostologist. Mr. Gamble, in his 
monograph, gives a description and a life-sized figure of every 
one of the Indian species. Of this monograph (which forms a 
volume of the ‘‘ Annals of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta”) Sir 
Joseph Hooker writes (at p. 375. vol. vii. of his ‘‘ Flora of 
British India”) ; ‘‘ It is indispensable to the student of the tribe 
by reason of its descriptions and admirable plates and analyses.” 
Mr. Gamble has also published a Manual of Indian Timbers. 
A forest officer who was ever ready to help in botanical work, 
but who never himself published, was Mr. Gustav Mann, for 
many years Conservator of Forests in Assam, but now lost to 
India by his premature retirement. Other forest officers, who 
have done, and are still doing, good botanical work in their 
various spheres, are Messrs. Lace, Heinig, Haines, McDonell, 
Ellis, Oliver, and Upendra Nath Kanjilal. Mr. Bourdillon, 
conservator of forests in the Travancore State, is also an 
enthusiastic botanist and collector. 
In the Madras Presidency botanical work has been carried on 
during* this second half of the century by Noton, Perrottet, 
Metz, Hohenacher, Schmidt (on the Nilgiris), Bidie and Law- 
son. By the efforts of the latter two, a second public herbarium 
was established in Madras (the first having been broken up 
many years ago), and in this second Madras herbarium are to 
be found many of the collections of Wight, besides those of the 
other Madras botanists just named. 
In the Bombay Presidency, the only public herbarium is at 
Poona. This is of recent origin, and owes its existence to the 
devotion of four men, viz. Dr. Theodore Cooke (late principal 
of the College of Science at Poona), Mr. Marshall Woodrow 
(until recently superintendent of the garden at Guneshkind and 
lecturer in botany in the Poona College), the late Mr. Ranade 
(a native gentleman), and Dr. Lisboa (a2 medical practitioner in 
the Deccan)—all four enthusiastic botanists. The amount of 
Government support given to the herbarium at Poona has 
hitherto been very inadequate. It is to be hoped that greater 
liberality may be extended to it now that a stranger to the 
Bombay Presidency has just been appointed to its charge in the 
person of Mr. George Gammie, hitherto employed in the 
cinchona department of Bengal. : 
Reference has already been made to the botanic gardens at 
Seharunpore and Calcutta. But to complete this sketch, and 
especially in order to give a clear idea of the apparatus at 
present existing in India for carrying on the study and practice 
of systematic botany, it is necessary again to refer to them. 
On the retirement of Dr. Jameson in 1872, Mr. J. F. Duthie was 
selected by the Secretary of State for {India as superintendent 
of the Seharunpore garden. Mr. Duthie is still at Seharunpore. 
During his tenure of office he has added to the herbarium pre- 
viously existing there (which consisted chiefly of the collections 
of Royle, Falconer and Jameson) a magnificent collection of 
his own, Mr, Duthie has published a valuable book on the 
“Field and Garden Crops of the North-western Provinces,” 
and another on the grasses of the same area. He is now en- 
NO. 1564, VOL. 60] 
gaged on the preparation of local floras of the North-west 
Provinces and of the Punjab. 
The Calcutta Garden at the date of Sir J. D. Hooker’s 
arrival in India in 1848 was under the charge of Dr. Falconer, 
who, in 1855, was succeeded by Dr. J. Thomson, and he in 
turn by Dr. T. Anderson in 1861. Mr. C. B. Clarke acted as 
superintendent during the interregnum between Dr. Anderson’s 
lamented death in 1870 and my own appointment in 1871. The 
garden and herbarium at Calcutta have been most liberally 
supported by the Government of Bengal. By funds thus sup- 
plied the garden has been remodelled and improved ; the 
herbarium has been housed in an excellent fire-proof building 
(erected in 1883), and the collections of which it consists have 
been greatly increased. The chief items of these later acquisi- 
tions have been the large contributions of Mr. C. B. Clarke ; of 
Dr. D. Prain, for many years curator of the herbarium, and 
now superintendent of the garden and of the cinchona plant- 
ation and factory ; of Mr. G. A. Gammie, formerly one of the 
staff of the cinchona plantation, and now lecturer on botany 
in the College of Science at Poona; of Mr. R. Pantling, 
deputy-superintendent of the cinchona plantation, who, in 
addition to dried specimens of the orchids of Sikkim, con- 
tributed nearly five hundred drawings, most of which have been 
lithographed as the illustrations to a book published in the 
“* Annals” of the garden, as the ‘‘ Orchid Flora of Sikkim ” ; 
of Mr. Kunstler, a collector in the Malay Peninsula ; and last, 
but by no means least, of a trained band of aborigines of Sikkim 
named Lepchas who possess keener powers of observation of 
natural objects, more patience, sweeter tempers, and, I am 
bound in fairness to add, dirtier clothes than any race I have 
ever met—black, yellow, or white! In addition to their liberal 
grants to the garden and herbarium, the Bengal Government, 
twelve years ago, sanctioned the publication, at their expense, 
as occasion might offer, of monographs of important families or 
genera of Indian plants. These monographs are printed in 
quarto, and they are, with one exception, profusely illustrated 
by plates drawn and lithographed by Bengali draughtsmen. 
The series is known as ‘‘The Annals of the Royal Botanic 
Garden, Calcutta,” and it has now reached its eighth volume, 
the ninth being in active preparation. These ‘‘ Annals” have 
been contributed to by Dr. Prain (my successor at the Calcutta 
Garden), by Dr. D. Douglas Cunningham, Mr. J. S. Gamble, 
Mr. R. Pantling, and myself. 
About ten years ago, it occurred to the Supreme Government 
of India that it might be to the interest of science if the four 
botanical establishments at Calcutta, Seharunpore, Madras, and 
Poona were to be formed into a kind of hierarchy under the 
designation of the Botanical Survey of India, without removing 
either the officers or the four institutions to which they were 
attached from the financial or general control of the local 
administrations within which they are respectively situated, the 
Supreme Government making a small contribution of money for 
the purpose of exploring little-known districts and making itself 
responsible for the cost of a publication called ‘‘ The Records of 
the Botanical Survey.” The four institutions just mentioned 
continue, therefore, to be paid for and controlled by the Govern- 
ments of Bengal, the North-west Provinces, Madras and 
Bombay, but their superintendents are placed on the cadre of 
the Botanical Survey. The published Records of this Survey 
now extend to twelve numbers, each of which is devoted to an 
account of the botany of some part of the enormous and 
continually expanding area to be explored. 
Such, then, is the machinery by which systematic, as distin- 
guished from economic and physiological, botany is carried on 
within the Indian Empire. But the work done in India itself 
by no means represents all the work that is being carried on in 
connection with the elucidation of the flora of the Empire of 
India. On the contrary, the bulk of the work of elaborating 
the materials sent from India in the shape of dried specimens 
has always been, and must always be, done in a large herb- 
arium ; and until lately no herbarium in Asia has been suffi- 
ciently extensive. The last word on every difficult taxonomic 
question must still lie in Europe. A very large number of the 
herbarium specimens collected in India have found their way 
to the various centres of botanical activity in Europe, and have 
been described by botanists of many nationalities. The lion’s 
share of these specimens has naturally come to the two great 
national herbaria in the British Museum and at Kew, but 
especially to the latter. It was inthe Kew Herbarium that Sir 
Joseph Hooker and his collaborateurs prepared the flora of 
