144 
THE VEGETATION OE THE DISTRICTS OF 
find that he only succeeded in carrying his synopsis as far as the 
Malvaceae , and although it appears that he had intended* to resume 
the project at a later date he never did so. 1 The portion actually 
published was, as he himself explains, only a rough copy of a portion 
of the projected work, and if one may judge from this portion it is 
possible that it would have proved less useful than Masters anti- 
cipated. The whole list, Masters says, was to have included 3,972 
species. 
It is probable that one reason why Masters never resumed his 
Calcutta Flora was that about the same time Voigt was engaged in 
preparing his well-known Hortus Suburbanus Calcuttensis , published 
at Calcutta in 1845. J. O. Voigt, one of the most painstaking botanists 
who has worked in India, was appointed Surgeon to the Danish 
Colony of Seram pore in 1827, when 29 years of age. Under the 
influence of the veteran Dr. Carey he gave much of his spare time to 
botanical study, and in 1834, on Dr. Carey’s death, he took charge of 
Dr. Carey’s garden at Serampore, and out of pious regard for Carey’s 
memory set to work almost at once to put into permanent form the 
results of Carey’s botanical and cultural work during the preceding 
30 years. 
The Serampore Garden, in Carey’s and Voigt’s day almost as im- 
portant as the Botanic Garden at Shibpur, worked hand in hand with 
the latter institution. Thus it was Dr. Carey, and not the Honour- 
able Company, who in 1814 undertook the task of publishing Rox- 
burgh’s Hortus Bengal ensisy in which are catalogued the 3,500 
species in cultivation in the Royal Botanic Garden between 1786 and 
1814. It is on this invaluable work which, but for the existence of 
the Serampore Garden, we should never have possessed, that Voigt’s 
larger one was based. Voigt’s Hortus , however, included the entries 
in Carey’s Garden Receipt Book , so that it dealt with all plants that 
had lived at Serampore, but had succumbed at Shibpur, and all 
plants introduced at Serampore between 1814 and 1834. It included 
besides, the catalogue drawn up by Masters to serve as the basis. of 
that writer’s abandoned Calcutta Flora , showing all the plants intro- 
duced into the Shibpur Garden between 1814 and 1836. It included 
' too a list by Dr, Wallich of plants introduced to the Royal Botanic 
Garden between 1836 and 1840, supplemented by a list made by 
Voigt himself, while acting in 1842 for Wallich, up to 1843. Voigt’s 
1 The paper concludes as follows ( Trans . Agvi.~Hort. Soc. India vii. 85) — 
il Here l am obliged suddenly to break off being” engaged in more important 
« matters ; the whole of my time is taken up with them, and I cannot devote any 
44 more to this subject at present.-^*^. W. Masters 6 May 3 > 1839” 
