JACK'S LETTERS TO WALLICH, 1819-1821. 223 



specimen of Sersalisia, but my traps have not come ashore, and the 

 boat is going off, so I must content myself with the description. 

 My best regards to Mrs. Wallich. 



And believe me always, 

 Yours very sincerely in haste, 



William Jack. 



On board the Sophia, 



Jan. 2nd, 1821. 

 My dear Wallich, 



I know not whether any of the letters I have fired off at you 

 since leaving Bencoolen have reached their destination, 263 but I 

 will suppose so, and think you know that I have been on my 

 perigrinations to Pulo Xias &c. I am now on my return and as 

 there will probably be lots of business awaiting me at my head 

 quarters, I shall take the opportunity of ship leisure to give you 

 some account of my operations. — I learn from Sir S. that there 

 is a huge despatch of yours waiting my return on which I long- 

 to feast, and after the long privation of all such food it will be 

 doubly delightful. What would I not have given for you to have 

 been with me on this trip, what exclamations, what treble marks 

 of admiration, how many of those evanescent figaries and freaks of 

 the imagination which constitute the very essence of the pleasure of 

 such exploration, alas ! all lost for want of a congenial spirit. Only 

 imagine my situation, condemned to the solitary enjoyment of all 

 these wonders in company with a freezing mass of ice, 264 out of 

 which all my fire failed to elicit one single spark, on whom all 

 the wonders of nature were as much thrown to waste as the flies 

 and insects were on Pharaoh and who could see more beauties 

 in a well kept ledger and Day book, than in all that ever occupied 

 the thoughts and heads of a Linnaeus or a Brown. 



Yerily there is a benumbling influence surrounding such inert 

 masses of vitality, and it will require a little time of more genial 

 intercourse and more enlivening atmosphere to restore to me the 

 caloric I have wasted without effect. 



I believe I told you that I was sent to form a settlement on 

 Pulo Xias and for this purpose joined in a commission with Mr. 

 Prince of Xattal. After several delays and difficulties I reached 



263. As there is only one in the correspondence preserved, it ap- 

 pears as if some have been lost. 



264. Mr. John Prince, a precise automaton, who was of not a little 

 service to the botanists of India at this time, see for instance p. 182. He 

 furnished to Roxburgh information from Sumatra as well as living plants ; 

 and he furnished later plants from Sumatra and Singapore to Wallich. He 

 is mentoned by Raffles as a witness to his assertions regarding the canni- 

 balism of the Bataks (Memoirs of the Life of Raffles, 1st edition, p. 432, or 

 2nd Edition, ii. (1835) p. 90). 



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



