378 History of Ceylon Botany. 



solicitude to the late Superintendent, Dr. Gardner. But the 

 heterogeneous duties imposed upon the person holding his office 

 .... have hitherto been insuperable obstacles to the attainment 

 of this object 



' P.S. — Since the foregoing passage was written, Mr. Thwaites 

 has announced the early publication of a new work on Ceylon 

 plants, to be entitled " Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniae ; with 

 Descriptions of the New and Little-known Genera and Species;" 

 and observations on their habits, uses, &c. In the identification of 

 the species, Mr. Thwaites is to be assisted by Dr. Hooker, F.R.S., 

 and from their conjoint labours we may at last hope for a production 

 worthy of the subject.'* 



Thwaites, in fact, began the printing of the ' Enumeratio,' his 

 only independent book, in the very year, 1858, in which Tennent 

 wrote, the work being issued in five fasciculi, between 1859 and 

 1864, and containing in all 483 pages, 8vo. It contains descriptions 

 in Latin of many new species, and Thwaites acknowledges the assist- 

 ance he had received in the identification of the species, and in the 

 synonymy, from Dr. (now Sir Joseph) Hooker. On the completion 

 ot the work, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and 

 received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the Imperial 

 Leopoldo-Carolinian Academy, whilst, in 1867, the beautiful genus 

 of Sinhalese climbing plants, Ke7tdrickia, Hook, fil., was dedicated 

 to him ; but he never himself considered his work as more than a 

 prodromus to a complete flora, or a catalogue to the extensive sets 

 of exsiccate which he distributed. It is worthy of note that in the 

 preface to the 'Enumeratio,' dated 1864, Thwaites announces his 

 adhesion to the Darwinian view of the nature of species. In i860, 

 Thwaites had established the cinchona nurseries at Hakgala, the 

 subsequent success of the cultivation of these plants in Ceylon being 

 largely due to his efforts. His successive annual official reports deal 

 also with the cultivation of vanilla, tea, cardamoms, cacao, and 

 Liberian coffee. In 1869, he sent to the Rev. M. J. Berkeley the 

 first specimens of the coffee-leaf fungus (Hemileia vastatrix) ; and 

 his reports from 1871 to 1880 —in some of which he was assisted by 

 Dr. Morris, C.M.G., F.L.S.,t and Dr. H. Marshall Ward, F.R.S.J 

 — deal with it and the suggested preventives, repudiating, in face of 

 much adverse popular opinion, any hope of external cures. After 

 the completion of the ' Enumeratio,' Thwaites returned to the study 

 of cryptogams, sending home more than 1200 fungi, which were 

 described by Messrs. Berkeley and Broome, § besides mosses, which 

 were published by Mr. Mitten in 1872, and lichens, some of which 

 were described by the Rev. W. A. Leighton in 1870. Thwaites's 

 health began to fail in 1867 ; and, Dr. Trimen having arrived in 



* Sir J. Emerson Tennent, ' Cey'on,' 3rd edition (1859), vol. i. pp. 84, 85. 

 *t* Now Commissioner of Agriculture in the West indies. 

 % Now Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge. 

 § Journ. Linn. Soc. (Bot.), xi. , 1871, pp. 494 et seq. 



