908 REPORT—1899. 
issued during the short period of thirteen years, and that during the whole 
of this time he performed his official duties. 
Besides this magnum opus Wight published his Spicilegiuwm Nilghirense in 
two vols. quarto, with 200 coloured plates. And between 1840 and 1850 he 
issued in two vols. quarto, with 200 plates, another book named ‘ Illustrations of 
Indian Botany,’ the object of which was to give figures and fuller descriptions of 
some of the chief species described in a systematic book of the highest Botanical 
merit, which he prepared conjointly with Dr. G. A. Walker-Arnot, Professor of 
Botany in the University of Glasgow, and which was published under the title 
‘Prodromus Florz Peninsule Indice.’ The ‘ Prodromus’ was the first attempt 
at a Flora of any part of India in which the natural system of classification was 
followed. Owing to various causes, this work was never completed, and this 
splendid fragment of a Flora of Peninsular India ends with the natural order 
Dipsacee. 
The next great Indian botanist whose labours demand our attention is 
William Griffith. Born in 1810, sixteen years after Wight, and twenty-four years 
later than Wallich, Griffith died before either. But the labours even of such 
devotees to science as were these two are quite eclipsed by those of this most 
remarkable man. Griffith’s Botanical career in India was begun in Tenasserim. 
From thence he made Botanical expeditions to the Assam valley, exploring the 
Mishmi, Khasia, and Naga ranges. From the latter he passed by a route never 
since traversed by a Botanist, through the Hookung valley down the Irrawadi to 
Rangoon. Having been appointed, soon after his arrival in Rangoon, surgeon to 
Pemberton’s Embassy to Bhotan, he explored part of that country, and also sent 
collectors into the neighbouring one of Sikkim. At the conclusion of this explora- 
tion he was transferred to the opposite extremity of the Northern frontier, and was 
posted to the Army of the Indus. After the subjugation of Cabul, he penetrated to 
Khorassau. Subsequently he visited the portion of the Himalaya of which Simla is 
now the best-known spot. He then made a run down the Nerbudda valley in Central 
India, and finally appeared in Malacca as Civil Surgeon of that Settlement. At 
the latter place he soon died of an abscess of the liver brought on by the hardships 
he had undergone on his various travels, which were made under conditions most 
inimical to health, in countries then absolutely unvisited by Europeans. No 
Botanist ever made such extensive explorations, nor himself collected so many 
species (9,000), as Griflith did during the brief thirteen years of his Indian career : 
none ever made so many field notes or wrote so many descriptions of plants from 
living specimens. His Botanical predecessors and contemporaries were men of 
ability and of devotion. Griffith was a man of genius. He did not confine him- 
self to the study of flowering plants, nor to the study of them from the point of 
view of their place in any system of classification. He also studied their morpho- 
logy. The difficult problems in the latter naturally had most attraction for him, 
and we find him publishing, in the ‘ Linnean Transactions,’ the results of his 
researches on the ovule in Santalum, Loranthus, Viscum, and Cycas. Griffith 
was also a cryptogamist. He collected, studied, and wrote much on Mosses, 
Liverworts, Marsiliacee, and Lycopods, and he made hundreds of drawings to 
illustrate his microscopic observations. Wherever he travelled he made sketches of 
the most striking features in the scenery. His habit of making notes was inyete- 
rate; and his itinerary diaries are full of information not only on the Botany, but 
also on the zoology, physical geography, geology, meteorology, archeology, and 
agriculture of the countries through which he passed. His manuscripts and 
drawings, although left in rather a chaotic state, were published after his death 
under the editorship of Dr. McClelland, at the expense of the enlightened and 
ever-liberal East India Company. They occupy six volumes in octavo, four in 
quarto, and one (a ‘ Monograph of Palms’) in folio. 
Another Botanist-of much fame, who died prematurely in 1822, after an Indian 
career of only nine years, was Dr. William Jack. In 1814-15 Jack accompanied 
Ochterlony’s army to the Nepal terai. He was transferred in 1818 to the Company’s 
Settlement in Sumatra under Sir Stamford Raffles, and during the four years of 
his residence in Sumatra he contributed to Botanical literature descriptions of 
