THE EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN BOTANY. 457 
profitable business was derived from the nutmegs and other spices 
exported from their settlements in Penang, Malacca, Amboina, 
Sumatra, and other islands of the Malayan Archipelago. The 
e 
sailing vessels, and the teak of which these ships were built had to 
be obtained from sources cela the Company’s enaaigerneey The 
proposal to found a Botanic Garden near Calcutta was thus recom- 
mended to the Governor a the Company’s settlements in Benga 
on the ground that, by its means, the cultivation of tok and of the 
Malayan a might be prince into a province near one of the 
Company’s chief Indian centres. Kyd, as a Lieutenant-Colonel of 
the Company S engineers eb as cack to the Military Board at 
Calcutta, occupied a position of considerable influence, and his 
suggestion evidently fell on no unwilling ears; for the seiner: 
of Bengal, with the promptitude to accept and to act on goo 
in scientific and semi- -seientific matters which has characterized 
Directors in London. Posts were slow and unfrequent in those 
ae and the Calcutta Government were impatient. They did not 
wait for a reply from Leadenhall Street, but in the following July 
they boldly secured the site recommended by Colonel Kyd. This 
site covered an area of three hu eed acres, and the whole of it, 
with the exception of thirty acres which were subsequently given up 
to Bishop Middleton for an English college, still continues under 
cultivation as a Botanic Garden. Kyd died in 1793, and in the 
same year his place as Superintendent of the garden was taken by 
Dr. William Roxburgh, a young botanical enthusiast, and one of 
Koenig’s “‘ United Brotherhood.” 
Roxburgh had studied botany in Edinburgh, where he was a 
favourite pupil of Dr. Hope. Desirous of seeing something of 
foreign countries, he made several voyages to Madras in shi 
belonging to the Honourable East India Company. In 1776 he 
accepted an appointment in the Company’s Medical Establishment, 
and was posted to the town of Madras, where he very soon made 
the acquaintance of Koenig. Roxburgh was shortly after trans- 
Northern Cirears. The of Samulcotta, 
which formed Roxburgh’s headquarters during his ie in the 
Circars, stands on the edge of a hilly region possessing a very 
interesting flora, and this flora he explored with the eatin ardour ; 
and as part of the result of his labours an account of some of the 
most interesting of its plants was published in London, at the East 
ndia Company’s expense, in three large folio volumes, under the 
title The Plants of the Coast of Coromandel, This was Roxburgh’s 
earliest canine on a large scale. The ee et of this book 
appeared in 1795, and the last not until 1819 . five years after 
the author’s death. The increased Pont Cal afforded to Roxburgh 
