William Jack's Letters to Nathaniel Wallich, 



1819-1821. 



copied for the 



Straits Branch of the Eoyal Asiatic Society. 



from the Eecords of the Eoyal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, 



by kind permission, 



under the superintendence of Major A. T. Gage, edited, with a 



list of the plants known to have been collected by Jack, 



and with notes by I. H. Burkill. 



Sir Stamford Eaffles, in 1817, when on leave in England, 

 was appointed by the Court of Directors of the Honourable East 

 India Company to the post of Lieutenant-Governor of the decaying 

 settlement of Bencoolen in Sumatra; and he sailed from Ports- 

 mouth to take up his new duties. He had attached to his staff 

 the naturalist Joseph Arnold, whose name is so aptly associated 

 with his own in Rafflesia Arnoldi, — that of the parasite with the 

 gigantic flower, which they discovered together on a journey into 

 the interior of Sumatra (May 20th, 1818). Soon after this, per- 

 haps from the fatigues of this very journey, Arnold died (vide 

 Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford 

 Raffles, London 1830, p. 365). 



Affairs so fell that after Arnold's death Eaffles had to 

 revisit Calcutta, and when there he got together a staff of natura- 

 lists. This is how he alludes to them in a letter dated Nov. 26th, 

 1818 to the Duchess of Somerset " I take down from hence a 

 medical man of the name of Jack, who will be entrusted with the 

 botanical part of my researches : and I have two Frenchmen, M. 

 Diard and M. Duvaucel, the former the pupil and the later the 



step-son of Cuvier These three savans with a missionary 



clergyman, who takes charge of a printing press, form my equip- 

 ment from Calcutta, so that I hope we may do something." 



William Jack, who has thus been introduced to the reader, 

 was the eldest son of the Eev. William Jack, and his wife Grace 

 Boult. 



Of the father, Dr. J. W. H. Traill, Professor of Botany in the 

 University of Aberdeen, has been so good as to supply the follow- 

 ing information. He had the degrees of M.A. and M.D. and was 

 chosen to be Professor of Mathematics in King's College, Aberdeen 

 in 1794. This chair he held until 1811 when he exchanged it for 

 that of Moral Philosophy. In 1815 he was elected to the post of 

 Principal, and held it until his death at a great age in 1854. 



The son's career is given in Hooker's Companion to the 

 Botanical Magazine, i. 1835, p. 120, from the pen of his mother: 



Jour. Straits Branch R. A. Soc, No. 73, 1916. 



