The printing of the present Number of the Journal was just com- 

 pleted, when intelligence was received of the decease of one of the 

 oldest and firmest friends of the Royal Institution of Cornwall — Major- 

 General Francis Jenkins. He died of fever, at Gowhatty, in Assam, on 

 the 28th of August last, at the age of 74. Having gone to India a boy, 

 fourteen years old, and having never once left it, a term of sixty years 

 of full work in that climate must make us regard his life as a long one ; 

 but his vigorous constitution, and the longevity of his parents, encour- 

 aged the hope that he might have attained an age yet more advanced. 

 He was born at the picturesque village of St. Clement, where his 

 father was long located as Vicar, and he retained to the last the warmest 

 regard for his native jDarish, and for the town of Truro, therein situated, 

 or adjacent. This may be called the centre of his home affections, but 

 they expanded freely over the whole of Cornwall, of whose peculiar 

 interests he was through life an active and liberal promoter. He rose 

 steadily through the usual grades of military rank, and attained that of 

 Major-General ; but to his administrative ability was chiefly owing his 

 marked success in life, and the consequent powers of usefulness which 

 he employed so well. He was appointed, in the vigour of manhood, to 

 the office of Commissioner of Assam, and that extensive territory has 

 been greatly indebted to his sound judgment, energy, and fostering care, 

 for its rapid advance in material prosperity ; the cultivation of the 

 vegetable productions adapted to the soil and climate — that of the tea 

 plant especially — was sedulously promoted by him. 



General Jenkins abounded in charity and benevolence in every form 

 in which they can be exercised ; but his experienced judgment led him 

 to regard education in its widest scope — religious, moral, intellectual — 

 as the best boon which can be conferred on mankind ; and to its diffu- 

 sion, whether among the foreign race under his control, or in his native 

 county, he lent his most liberal and strenuous aid. This is not the place 

 for any minute record ofyhis contributions to this cause; it will be 

 sufficient to specify his donation of more than £700 to the Training 

 School for Female Teachers in St. Clement's ; but his constant support 

 of the scientific societies of the county, and of this Institution in par- 

 ticular, sprung from his intelligent sense of their value as instruments 

 for mental cultivation, no less than for the furtherance of material 

 weal. Our Museum is very largely indebted to him, especially for the 

 very fine specimens it contains from the animal kingdom of the East ; 

 and the vegetable nature of the same regions is amply illustrated by the 

 Hortus Siccus, presented by him to the Horticultural Society, and now 

 in our keeping. The series of our Reports records — for many years un- 

 interruptedly — his various donations in these departments, and also in 

 money ; whilst from time to time he transmitted, chiefly through cor- 

 respondence with the late Mr. W. Mansel Tweedy, interesting notices of 

 facts observed by him ; for though not strictly a man of science, he saw 

 the phenomena around him with an open and well informed eye, as is 

 exemplified in his remarks on the formation of coal or lignite in the 

 mud and sandbanks of the Burhampooter, in the Beport for 1843. 



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