374 History of Ceylon Botany. 



a somewhat unsatisfactory performance.* Moon died in 1825.- 

 There are plants collected by him in the Kew herbarium, and some 

 of his drawings are in the Botanical Department of the British 

 Museum. Arnott dedicated to him the genus Moonia, now sunk 

 in Chrysogonum, L. 



James stfacrae, who had been employed in the garden at 

 St. Vincent in 1823, and had subsequently collected for the Horti- 

 cultural Society in the Pacific, in Chili, and Bengal, was appointed 

 Superintendent in 1827, but at his death, in 1830^ had not, appa- 

 rently, much advanced the cause of botany in Ceylon ; nor, in fact, 

 was much likely to be done until a more highly educated type of 

 man was appointed to the post. 



Meanwhile, amateur work 'was doing something. Colonel, after- 

 wards General, James Thomas Walker and his wife, Mrs. 

 A. "W. Walker nee Paton, collected in the island from 1830 to 1840. 

 A description of their ascent of Adam's Peak appears in the ' Com- 

 panion to the Botanical Magazine,' vol. i. (1835), p. 3 ; and a 'Tour 

 in Ceylon,' by Mrs Walker, in Hooker's 'Journal of Botany,' 1840, 

 p. 223. General and Mrs. Walker's plants formed part of Sir W. J. 

 Hooker's herbarium, now at Kew, and also did those of his friend, 

 Dr. Charles BXillett, who, about 1834, collected in Southern 

 China, in Ceylon, and on the Malabar coast, % and those of Major, 

 afterwards Lieut. -Colonel, Champion. 



Dr. Robert Wig-ht, F.R.S., born in East Lothian, '796, 

 graduated M.D. in Edinburgh in 18 18. Entering the East India 

 Company's service as Assistant-Surgeon in the army, he was from 

 1826 to 1828 stationed at Madras, and from 1836-1850 was 

 Superintendent of the efforts of the Government for the improve- 

 ment of cotton cultivation in the peninsula. During three years' 

 furlough in England (1831-1834), he began, in conjunction with 

 Dr. Walker-Arnott, the publication of his botanical materials, 

 especially in the ' Prodromus Florae Peninsulas Indiae Orientalist 

 In 1836 a severe attack of fever, caught in Tinnevelly, obliged him 

 to pay a short visit to Ceylon to recruit, and whilst there he collected 

 extensively in company with Colonel and Mrs. Walker, in compli- 

 ment to the latter of whom he named the genus Patonia, now 

 merged in Xylopia, L. It was during this furlough above 

 mentioned, that Dr. Wight, when staying with his friend, Sir W. 

 Hooker, at Glasgow, acquired the art of lithography, and providing 

 himself, at his own expense, with printing-press stones and all 

 necessary materials ; he on his return to India introduced the art 

 into the Madras Presidency, and commenced his ' Illustrations of 

 Indian Botany,' with 182 plates, which was followed by the ' Icones 



* Sir J. Emerson Tennent, ' Ceylon,' 3rd ed. , vol. i. p. 84. 



■f" There seems to have been a fate against any commemoration of Macrae's name: 

 Macrcea, Lindl., is Viviania, Cav. ; Macrcea, Wight, Phyllanthus, L. ; and Macrcza t . 

 Hook. fil. , Lipochceta, DC. 



X The genus Millettia, Wight and Arnott, was named after him. 



