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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



be to rival the London parks, where such an attraction was eminently 

 suitable and admirably carried out. In the end he came to an arrange- 

 ment with his chief (Sir Benjamin Hall, I think) that a sum of money 

 should be added to the estimates and appropriated to this decorative 

 work, and that he be supplied with a skilled foreman to carry it out. 

 The system was continued for several years, and was thereafter gradually 

 suppressed. 



"The years 1860 to 1862 were notable for the successful efforts in 

 introducing the Peruvian barks into India and our tropical colonies. 

 Mr. (now Sir Clements) Markham had induced the Indian Government to 

 undertake this measure, which had been urged upon it by Sir Joseph 

 Banks more than half a century before, and by various botanists since. 

 Mr. Markham himself went to Peru, and brought to England living 

 plants, which, after a short nursing at Kew, he took on to India and 

 established in the Nilghiri Hills. Meanwhile my father, to whom the 

 Indian Government applied for advice, not trusting wholly to the risky 

 transport of living plants, urged that collectors should be sent to Ecuador 

 and Bolivia for seeds of the different species, recommending at the same 

 time the employment in Ecuador of Mr. R. Spruce, an able botanist and 

 collector, who happened at the time to be in that country. 



" In the Report on the progress and condition of the Royal Gardens 

 during the year 1861 it is stated that ' the means adopted for 

 introducing Cinchonas (trees yielding quinine) into the East Indies and 

 our tropical colonies rank first in point of interest and importance of the 

 works of the past year. In my Report for 1860 I mentioned the erection, 

 at the desire of the Secretary of State for India in Council, of a forcing- 

 house, especially for the cultivation of the Cinchonas, with the view of 

 establishing plantations of them in India. The operations of the several 

 parties organised to proceed into the Andes and procure young plants and 

 seeds have been described in detailed reports laid before the Secretary 

 of State for India by Clements R. Markham, Esq. Upon the Royal 

 Gardens devolved the duties of receiving and transmitting the seeds and 

 plants to India, of raising a large crop of seedlings, of nursing the young 

 stock, lest those sent on should perish or the seeds lose their vitality, and 

 of recommending competent gardeners to take charge of the living plants 

 from their native forests to the hill country of India, and to have the 

 care of the new plantations there. Further, with the sanction of the 

 Indian and Colonial Governments, it was arranged that our West Indian 

 colonies and Ceylon should be supplied with a portion of the seeds.' 



" In 1865, the last year of my father's life, he received from the Lords 

 of the Admiralty the gratifying intelligence that his long-sustained 

 exertions in sending such plants to the sterile island of Ascension as 

 would most effectively and speedily clothe its naked soil, and thus 

 conserve a water supply, had been crowned with success. It was in 

 1843, after the return of Sir James Ross's Antarctic Expedition, which had 

 touched at the island on its homeward voyage, that the idea of planting 

 that island extensively with such trees, herbs, and shrubs as were best 

 suited to its soil and climate originated. Ascension being a naval station, 

 the Admiralty favoured the idea, and Kew was applied to for aid in 



