160 JACK'S LETTEES TO WALLICH, 1819-1821. 



Give my compliments to 30 if you see him, and to 



Col. Hardwicke. 31 



Believe me ever, 



Yours most sincerely, 



William Jack. 

 Pulo Pen an g, 



Jan. 2nd, 1819. 



P.S. I enclose seeds of a new species of Sonerila, 32 which 

 I found this morning in the woods. I found also two very splendid 

 plants, the Alpinia mutica 33 and punicea 34 of Roxb. I shall send 

 the other few trifling specimens in a separate packet with this. I 

 am looking very anxiously for a good opportunity to give you a 

 sample of this Island. If not too much trouble, I should like to 

 have Koxh.'s char: of his Melaleuca cajuputi 35 Tie gives in the 

 list 36 a Mangifera gandaria, but there is no description of it in the 

 MSS, 37 which I have. Whose and what is it? I could wish to 



SO. Name illegible. A. T. G. 



31. Colonel, afterwards Major-General, Thomas Hardwicke (died 

 1835) a zoologist of great merit, served in the Indian army for many 

 years, using Irs opportunities there and in Mauritius for collecting speci- 

 mens, and making drawings. He was Vice-President of the Asiatic Society 

 of Bengal when Lord Hastings was its President. A Major H — is men- 

 tioned in the extracts of Jack's letters to his parents which Sir William 

 Hooker printed, as stationed with Jack at Dinapur, and it may be that 

 this was Major General Hardwicke. 



32. Probably Sonerila erecta, Jack, described in the Malayan Mis- 

 cellanies, i. No. 5 p. 7. 



33. Alpinia mutica was described by Eoxburgh as haying been in- 

 troduced into the Calcutta Botanical Gardens from Penang. It flowered 

 in Calcutta; and it has been in many Gardens since, so that it is well 

 known. But it has not been found in Penang by any one during the last 

 century: and the query is raised whether Eoxburgh got it from wild plants, 

 it being extinct now in Penang, or from its known home on the eastern 

 side of the Malay Peninsula via Penang. The allied Alpinia assimilis, K. 

 Schum., which occurs freely in Penang might have been mistaken by Jack 

 for the other (vide Eidley," in this Journal No. 30, 1899, p. 165). 



34. Alpinia punicea, Boxb., Flora indica, i. p. 71 is Homstedtia 

 punicea, K. Schum., a plant not known to occur in Penang. But there 

 is in the island H. megalocheilos, Eidl. which has "crimson stars of 

 flowers on the surface of the ground'' just as Jack describes this in the 

 next letter: and it was probably it that he had obtained. 



35. It is worth remark in passing that here we have again one of 

 the Eoxburghian adoptions of a Dutch spelling of which Jack complains. 

 Mimosa Djiringa and Melaleuca Cajuputi are equally objectionable, or 

 acceptable. See p. 165. 



36. Eoxburgh 's Hortus Bengalen&is, Avhich had been printed by Carey 

 in the year after its author left India. 



37. Eoxburgh with as much generosity as Scotch prudence, left several 

 copies of his Flora indica in manuscript in India in the hands of friends, 

 and it appears as if Jack had been able to provide himself with extracts 

 from one of them, but at this date was in need of much more than he 

 had. We find him later paying the wages of a copyist in Calcutta for 

 the obtaining of further copy. See note No. 119, p. 181. 



Jour. Straits Brar.eh 



