Sir George King. 



xxv 



quinine seemed to justify the step, that King commenced the publication of 

 important contributions to botanical literature. In that year the enlightened 

 liberality of the Government of Bengal enabled King to found the ' Annals 

 of the Boyal Botanic Garden, Calcutta,' a series of 'sumptuous volumes in 

 which he proceeded to publish amply illustrated monographs of difficult 

 and unwieldy genera and families. The first of these deals with "the 

 species of Ficus of the Indo - Malayan and Chinese countries." On 

 this work he had bestowed the labour of much of his scanty leisure 

 for eleven years, during which time he had examined the material 

 preserved in every important European collection. The objects he 

 had in view were altogether practical ones ; the genus was selected 

 because of its being largely composed of trees, many of them being of 

 economic importance, and the monograph was primarily intended to break 

 ground for Sir Joseph Hooker and to assist that author in subsequently 

 dealing with its species. The work, however, is marked by such accuracy, 

 lucidity, and completeness that it at once placed King among the foremost 

 systematic botanists of his time, and its appearance was rapidly followed by 

 that of equally finished works on Que reus, Castanopsis, Artocarpus, and 

 Myristica, all prepared with the same object and selected for the same 

 reasons. When King visited Java in 1879 he had an opportunity of seeing 

 something of the rich vegetation of Malaya, which made on his mind an 

 ineffaceable impression. From Singapore he paid a botanical visit to Johor, 

 in company with his friend Archdeacon (now Bishop) Hose. He collected 

 personally in Penang and Province Wellesley, and was subsequently able to 

 arrange for the systematic botanical exploration of Perak. In 1886 facilities 

 were afforded, at the request of King's friend, Sir Hugh Low, to Father 

 Scortechini, who had also made extensive collections in Perak, to commence 

 the preparation in the Calcutta herbarium of a flora of that State. Scortechini, 

 unfortunately, soon afterwards died, bequeathing to the Calcutta Garden all 

 his specimens, drawings, and notes. Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Hugh Low 

 now begged King himself to undertake this very urgent task, and in 1889 he 

 commenced single -handed a floristic study of the whole Malayan Peninsula. 

 As preliminary to the preparation of a local flora of the region — the first of 

 the series of such floras, whose publication for the various provinces of India 

 he was two years later officially entitled to urge — King began to issue, in the 

 ' Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' a series of contributions intended 

 to serve as " Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula," but prepared 

 with such care that they form a satisfactory substitute for a final work. 



Five instalments of this great undertaking, completing the Thalamiflorae, 

 were issued up to 1893, but in the case of two important families, Magnoliacese 

 and Anonaceee, the study of the Malayan forms involved a careful examina- 

 tion of extra-Malayan material, the results of which were embodied in two 

 great monographs simultaneously published in the garden ' Annals.' In 

 1895, King, having attained the age of fifty-five, was, under Indian rules, due 



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