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before that, in 1854, the Indian Government had begged from the 

 Java plantations some of their cuttings, which were most liberally 

 given. Owing to the superiority of climate, the Indian Government 

 up to 18G2 had succeeded seven times better than the Dutch, and 

 in that year there were actually planted out on the Neilgherry Hills 

 more than 7£,000 plants of 11 different species of this invaluable 

 tree. Unfortunately, the principal part of the Dutch plantation is 

 useless, being formed of the worthless species of the C. Pahudiana; but 

 they are remedying their mistakes, and making great progress. 

 Chinehona cultivation is also fairly started in Ceylon, and I have no 

 doubt that in process of time a plantation of 150 acres of the chin- 

 ehona there will be more profitable than one double the size of 

 coffee. Thus, while three or four earnest, but high-minded men, 

 have toiled and passed through the troubles of hunger and thirst, the 

 sword and nakedness, and the perils of the sea, to do a work which 

 only the law of their own natures imposed upon them, and the 

 reward for which is only what some esteem as empty fame — the 

 world has been blessed, some of its useless soil made fruitful, its 

 naked hills made to laugh and sing, and myriads of men and women, 

 whose lot of life is to labour in fever-smitten swamps, are provided 

 with a power to defeat an insidious enemy which rests not till it has 

 them in the grasp of an agonizing death. These are some of the 

 triumphs of the art of acclimatisation, which give lustre to its labours, 

 and might and dignity to its name. 



ENGLAND'S DEBT TO ACCLIMATISEKS. 



Read by James Smith, Esq., at a Meeting held July 19, 1S64. 



I think it may not be unserviceable to remind those who regard 

 acclimatisation as the new-fangled hobby of a few crochetty enthu- 

 siasts, that it has been practised in England for a period of 1200 

 years — dating from the time at which the first wheat was sown in 

 her soil — and that, up to the commencement of the sixteenth century, 

 at which period great efforts seem to have been made for the intro- 

 duction of exotic flowers, fruits, and vegetables, the mother country 

 was singularly destitute of all these ; her population subsisting, as 

 some of the early settlers of this colony did, upon beef, mutton, and 

 damper. Indeed, there is a striking similarity between the condition 

 of England in the dawn of her civilization and that of Australia at 

 the present time. She was both a pastoral and a gold-producing 

 country ; and her exports consisted of gold, silver, tin, copper, wool, 

 and horses. Not to pursue this parallel further, however, I will at 

 once proceed to point out what acclimatisation has done for England 

 in regard to fruits, flowers, and esculents. The very rose which we 

 adopt as a national emblem, and profess to consider so purely English, 

 is an alien, and was brought over from France, Flanders, and Italy. 

 The honeysuckle which garlands the hedgerows and overruns the 



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