xl 



BIOGRAnnCAL SKETCH. 



nurseries. The subject was taken up some years afterwards ; 

 the bark-yielding Cinchonas were then introduced from 

 South America, and they are now thriving and promise to 

 be a new source of wealth to India. From what has been 

 stated, it will be seen that Falconer was not only instru- 

 mental in rescuing from destruction the Teak forests of 

 Tenasserim, but in introducing the cultivation of Tea and 

 Cmchona Bark into our Indian Empire. During his resi- 

 dence in Calcutta, Dr, Falconer communicated to the Agri- 

 cultural and Horticultural Society many botanical and other 

 reports of great economic value, among which may be 

 mentioned those on ' The Woods for Railway Sleepers in 

 India,' on ' The Timber Trees used for Fuel,' on ' The best 

 means of Tapping the Caoutchouc Tree of Assam,' ' and on 

 'The Wild Cochineal insect of Assam.' ^ He was likewise 

 employed in the selection and arrangement of the illustra- 

 tions of the Botanical products of Bengal forwarded to the 

 Great Exhibition of 1851 ; and he was the author of the 

 Rej)ort on Cashmeer Shawls which appeared in the Official 

 Catalogue.^ In 1854, assisted by his friend the late Mr. 

 Henry Walker, Professor of Physiology in the Medical 

 College of Calcxitta, he undertook a descriptive catalogue of 

 the fossil collections in the Museum of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal, which was published as a distinct work in 1859.* 

 The labour which this involved was immense. No separate 

 record had been kept by the Society of the numerous pre- 

 sentations of fossils which had been made to it from time to 

 time, and the specimens from different localities were mixed 

 uj) in the most hopeless confusion. Fossil bones from the 

 Lias of England, from the Cape of Good Hope, Ava, Perim 

 Island, the Valley of the ISTerbudda, and the Sewalik Hills 

 were liuddled together in heaps in various rooms, and in 

 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred without a label or mark 

 of any kind to indicate whence they came. Dr. Falconer's 

 familiarity with the characters of the fossils from different 

 sources in India enabled him to convert what was little more 



' See List of Botanical Memoirs and 

 Keports at page Ivi. 



^ Journ. Agr. Hort. Soc. of India, 

 vol. vii. p. 33. 



' Offic. Descript. and Illust. Cat., vol. 

 ii. p. 934. 



* Descriptive Catalogue of the Fossil 

 Remains of Vertebrata from the Sewalik 

 Hills, &c., in the Museum of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal. Calcutta 1869. 8vo. 

 p. 261. 



