BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XXXV 



Cashmeer, Afghanistan, Tibet, the Punjab, the Himalayahs, 

 the plains of the N.W. provinces, and from the neighbourhood 

 of Darjeeling, Assam, and Sylhet ; and forty-eight cases con- 

 taining five tons of fossils bones, together with geological 

 specimens, illustrative of the Himalayan formations from the 

 Indus to the Gogra, and from the plains of the Punjab across 

 the mountains north to the Mooztagh range. 



Prom 1843 to 1847 Palconer remained in England. He 

 occupied this time in publishing numerous memoirs on the 

 geology and fossil remains of the Sewalik Hills, which 

 appeared in the ' Transactions ' of the Geological Society, 

 and in the ' Proceedings ' of the Zoological Society, of the 

 British Association, and of the Royal Asiatic Society, and 

 which have been reproduced in these his collected works. 

 He had now an opportunity of comparing the Indian fossils 

 with the metropolitan collections of Palseontology and Com- 

 parative Anatomy. On his arrival he was at first so weak that 

 for several weeks he was unable to walk, but his first visits were 

 to the Royal CoUege of Surgeons and the British Museum ; 

 and he at once wrote off a glowing account of the treat which 

 he had received to Captain Cautley, in India. He might well 

 contrast the advantages enjoyed by the palseontological 

 student in London with the difficulties which he and his 

 colleague had so ably sm-mounted in India. He also communi- 

 cated several important papers on Botanical subjects to the 

 Linnean Society ; ^ of which may be specially mentioned that 

 on AueJclandia Costus, the Cashmeer plant which yields the 

 Kostos of the ancients ; and that on Narthex Assafceticlce., 

 which was the first determination of the plant, long con- 

 tested among botanists, which yields the Assafoetida of com- 

 merce, and which he had found growing wild in the Yalley of 

 Astore, one of the afiluents of the Indus. His extensive 

 botanical collections, on which he had bestowed so much 

 labour, were unfortunate. Having partially suffered from 

 damp on the voyage to England, they were left deposited in 

 the East India House during Falconer's second absence in 

 India, and the specimens underwent a ruinous process of 

 decay. Those which escaped were obtained in 1867 from the 

 Court of Directors, by Dr. J. D. Hooker, for the Museum at 



' See List of Botanical Memoirs at p. Iv. 

 b 2 



