JACK'S LETTERS TO WALLICH, 1819-1821. 151 



handed over is evident from Jack's remark that Baffles had sent 

 Farquhar on a mission down the Straits, when the change of front 

 on the part of the Governor caused him to go first to Singapore, 

 and only afterwards to Acheen. 



The Acheen affair proved very tedious, and Baffles records 

 that the proceedings taken down in the investigation ran to up- 

 wards of a thousand pages of the Company's largest sized paper. 

 He had returned from founding Singapore to Penang and thence 

 gone forward to Acheen ; and all this time Jack was left with light 

 duties and the interesting flora of Prince of Wales Island to in- 

 vestigate. 



Of books Jack seems to have possessed Boxburgh's Hortus 

 Bengalensis — a mere catalogue printed in 181-1, his Coromandel 

 plants, Loureiro's Flora cochinckinensis, Bumpf's Herbarium 

 amboinense, and Lamarck's volumes of the Encyclopedie Metlio- 

 dique and some of Poiret's, together with extracts from the manu- 

 script of Boxburgh's Flora indica. Later he employed through 

 Wallich, a clerk to copy the whole manuscript, and he commenced 

 to subscribe for Bees' Cyclopaedia, De Candolle's Begni Vegeta- 

 bilis System a and Boemer and Schultes' Sy sterna vegetabilium. He 

 also bought Bheede's great Hortus Malabaricus. In 1820 Carey 

 and Wallich produced the first volume of their revision of Box- 

 burgh's Flora, and an early copy was sent to Jack, who thereupon 

 sent back to Carey what seem to have advance sheets. 



He employed a Chinese draftsman in Penang : but it is not 

 recorded if he continued to employ artists afterwards. 



The interest of the time was the finding of new species, and 

 their cataloguing. Jack brought to this work a really excellent 

 understanding of the natural system of classification, a kind of 

 intuition, the origins of which must have come from work in 

 Britain : and had he lived longer his work would have been splendid. 

 He also showed a small interest in geographic botany. 



SERIES 1-PENANG LETTERS. 



Prince of Wales Island 



Jan. 14th 1819. 

 My dear Wallich, 



At length the land of promise begins to open to me, and very 

 glorious it seems to be. I am so thoroughly occupied that I 

 perceive I shall have little time to write to you, if I put it off 

 to the last, therefore mean to take an hour or two from the night 

 occasionally and to continue my letters at intervals, which though 

 it will make them a little disjointed, I am sure you will excuse, as 

 I shall thereby be able to give you longer details. Of the voyage 

 I need not say much but that it was long and tedious, and on 

 several accounts far from comfortable. Sir Stamford was very ill 

 during part of it. 



R. A. Soc, No. 73, 1916. 



