916 REPORT—1899. 
Dr. Watt is an accomplished and able Botanist. He has collected Indian plants: 
largely, and has made numerous notes both in the field and in the bazaar. The 
great work which, on the initiative of Sir Edward Buck, Secretary to the Depart- 
ment of Revenue and Agriculture, and of Sir W. Thiselton Dyer, of Kew, 
Dr. Watt began and carried to a successful termination was the compilation of 
his ‘ Dictionary of Economic Products,’ in which valuable book is collected all that 
is known of almost every Indian product, whether vegetable, animal, or mineral. 
The study of Economic Botany is now pursued in India as part of a highly 
specialised system of inquiry and experiment. Dr. Watt has a competent staff 
under him in Calcutta, one of whom is Mr. D. Hooper, well known for his: 
original researches into the properties of various Indian drugs. Dr. Watt has 
arranged in Calcutta a magnificent museum of economic products, and there is no 
doubt the economic resources of the Empire are now being studied with as much 
energy as intelligence. 
Tea cultivation is one of the enterprises in the introduction and development. 
of which Botanists took a very leading part. The advisability of introducing the 
industry was first pressed on the attention of the East India Company by Dr. 
Govan (of Seharunpore), and in this he was seconded by Sir Joseph Banks as Pre- 
sident of the Royal Society. Royle in 1827, and Falconer slightly later, again 
urged it as regards the North-West Himalaya. In 1826 David Scott demon- 
strated to rather unwilling eyes in Calcutta the fact that real tea grows wild 
in Assam. In 1885 Wallich, Griffith, and McClelland were deputed by Govern-. 
ment to visit Assam, to report on the indigenous tea. In the year 1838 the 
first consignment of Indian-grown tea was offered for sale in London, The 
consignment consisted of twelve chests containing 20 lbs. each. This first sample 
of 240 lbs. was favourably reported upon. Last year the exports of tea from 
India to all countries reached 157 millions of pounds, besides 120 millions of pounds. 
exported from Ceylon! 
The introduction of cinchona into India originated purely with the Govern- 
ment Botanists. As everybody knows, quinine, and to a less extent the other 
alkaloids present in cinchona bark, are practically the only remedies for the 
commonest, and in some of its forms one of the most fatal, of all Indian diseases, 
viz. malarious fever. The sources of supply of the cinchona barks in their native 
countries in South America were known to be gradually failing, and the price of 
quinine had for long been increasing. The advisability of growing cinchona in the: 
mountains of British India was therefore pressed upon Government by Dr. Royle 
in 1835, and he repeated his suggestions in 1847,1853, and 1856, Dr. Falconer, in 
his capacity of Superintendent of the Botanic Garden, Calcutta, made a similar 
suggestion in 1852; and his successors at Calcutta, Dr. T. Thomson and Dr. T. 
Anderson, in turn advocated the proposal. In 1858 Government at last took action,, 
and, as the result of the labours of Sir Clements Markham and Sir W. J. Hooker, of 
Kew, the medicinal cinchonas were finally, in the period between 1861 and 1865, 
successfully introduced into British India—on the Nilgiris under Mr. Mclvor, and 
on the Sikkim-Himalaya under Dr. T. Anderson. Various experiments on the best 
mode of utilising the alkaloids contained in red cinchona bark resulted in the 
production in 1870 by Mr. Broughton, Quinologist on the Nilgiri plantation, of an 
amorphous preparation containing all the alkaloids of that bark. This preparation 
was- named Amorphous Quinine. Somewhat later (1875) a similar preparation, 
under the name of Cinchona Febrifuge, was produced at the Sikkim plantation by 
Mr. C. H. Wood, the Quinologist there; and of these drugs about fifty-one tony 
had been distributed from the Sikkim plantation up to the end of last year. The 
preparation of pure quinine from the yellow cinchona barks, sv successfully grown. 
in the Sikkim plantation, long remained a serious problem. The manufacture of 
quinine had hitherto been practically a trade secret. And when the Indian Goyern~ 
ment had succeeded in providing the raw material from which a cheap quinine 
might be made for distribution amongst its fever-stricken subjects, the knowledge 
of the means of extracting this quinine was wanting. Philanthropic platitudes 
were freely bandied about as to the immensity of the boon which cheap quinine 
would be to a fever-stricken population numbering so many millions. But there 
