Sir George King. 



xvii 



thoroughly exposed to sun and wind, and therefore favourable to the growth 

 of rank grasses which smothered the young trees and shrubs planted to 

 replace the uprooted veterans. Eoads and paths were insufficient in 

 number and unsatisfactory in condition and alignment. The site of the 

 garden, being part of the rice-swamp which forms the Gangetic delta, was 

 far from suitable to the successful cultivation of many desirable indigenous 

 and exotic species. The residences of the garden employes, native and 

 European alike, were inadequate and insanitary. The accommodation for 

 the herbarium and library was cramped and inconvenient ; the herbarium 

 collection, though extensive, was very unequal. The labours of Eoxburgh, 

 Buchanan, and Wallich from 1793 to 1828 had brought together the richest 

 botanical collection hitherto made in Asia. But in 1828 this collection was 

 taken to Europe, and Wallich, then on leave in England, dispersed it on 

 behalf of the East India Company with a generosity so lavish that nothing 

 was left for the institution at whose cost and on whose behalf it had been 

 formed. Something was done to repair this injury by Wallich himself on his 

 return (1832—46), by Falconer (1846—54), by Thomson (1854—59), and by 

 King's predecessor Anderson (1859 — 69), while the generous aid of Kew had 

 provided Calcutta with a substantial share of the contents of the East India 

 House cellars. But great leeway had still to be made up in order to render 

 the Calcutta Herbarium commensurate with the needs of so important 

 a botanical centre. 



The problems connected with cinchona were of equal importance and of 

 even greater difficulty. The Sikkim plantations, begun by Anderson ten 

 years before, and pushed on with a zeal which cost that indefatigable officer 

 his life, were an established fact when King assumed control. The policy of 

 Government had been to act, as in the case of tea, only as a pioneer. So 

 soon as it could be shown that private growers were in a position to under- 

 take the enterprise, Government was prepared to dispose of these experimental 

 plantations and retire from the field. In the case of cinchona this policy 

 could not be carried out. The experience of these ten years had proved that 

 in spite of every encouragement and assistance, the cultivation of cinchona in 

 Northern India is, owing to natural causes, unprofitable to private enterprise. 

 Government itself had therefore to attempt the economic separation, from the 

 bark produced on its own plantations, of the alkaloids this bark contained, 

 and to utilise these alkaloids in combating the ravages of malaria. Attempts 

 in this direction had been made before King assumed charge ; these attempts 

 had not been attended with success. But there was another equally important 

 problem to be dealt with. The bark of those cinchonas that had so far been 

 most successfully grown in Sikkim and that were therefore chiefly represented 

 in the Government plantations, is bark that, while rich in total alkaloids, is 

 relatively poor in quinine, the most important of these alkaloids. It was 

 therefore King's ambition to replace the kinds then most largely cultivated 

 by others whose bark is rich in quinine, and eventually to separate this 

 quinine in such a manner as to obviate financial loss to Government. With 

 VOL. lxxxi. — B. ' b 



