8 
HISTORY OF THE BOTANICAL 
T. Thomson, 1851, 1861, 1873.— Thomas Thomson 1 after 10 years 
distinguished work in the service of the East India Company joined 
his friend J. D. Hooker in Darjeeling (1819) and spent 1850 in travel- 
ling with him in the Sikkim Forests, the Khasi Hills, Cachar and 
Chittagong. On their return to England they largely increased the 
number of specimens of Hooker's previous collection at Aden, and also 
added some species to the list. The plants are preserved at Kew. 
In 1851, we find Thomson as Superintendent of the Botanic Garden 
in Calcutta. When, owing to ill-health, he returned to Europe in 1861, 
he once more made a small collection of plants at Aden. A third set of 
Aden plants, gathered by Thomson, dates from 1872. 
James Vaughan, 1853, 1853. — Very little is known of the life and 
work of James Vaughan, M.R.C.S. He was* Assistant Surgeon to 
the Bombay Army. 2 In 1852 we find him at Aden in the capacity of 
Civil and Port Surgeon, 
In the same year he published his valuable “ Notes upon the Drugs 
observed at Aden, Arabia." 3 Hooker's Journal of Botany says that the 
article “ is full of important information, collected by a gentleman 
every way qualified for such an undertaking, during an official residence 
at Aden." 
We give the following extracts from Vaughan's paper:—* 
“ With some of these vegetable productions," he says, “ the com- 
mercial and scientific world are already acquainted, with others they are 
1 T. Thomson, born in Glasgow on the 4th December 1817. On entering the medical 
classes at Glasgow he Concentrated his attention on botany, under Sir William Jackson Hooker. 
After graduating M. D. in 1834 he entered the service of the East India Company as Assis- 
tant Surgeon. He was appointed to the Curatorsh ip of the Museum of the Asiatic Society 
in Calcutta in 1840. In August of the same year he was sent to Afghanistan in charge of a 
party of European recruits. He was beseiged in Ghuznee during the winter of 1841, and 
when the place fell in March 1842, he was made a prisoner, destined to be sold into slavery 
in Bokhara. But he succeeded in bribing his captor to convey liim with some fellow- 
prisoners to the British army of relief. Later on he served through the Sutlej campaign 
and was afterwards stationed at Lahore and Ferozepur. During this period he was engaged 
in exploring the botany of the plains and the outer Himalaya ( * Western Himalaya and 
Tibet/ London, 1852). Returned to England in very broken health in 1851, succeeded 
Falconer as Superintendent of the Botanical Garden in Calcutta in 1854. Retired in 1861 
and returned to England in ill-health. Went again to India in 1871. Died in London 
on the 18th April 1878. 
Cf. Journ. Bot. (1878), p. 160 ; * Nature ’ vol. 18, p. 15 j Proc. Georgr. Soc., vol. 22, 
p. 309 ; Gardener’s Chronicle I, (1878), p. 529. 
2 Britten, J., and Boulger, G. S.: Biographical Index of British and Irish Botanists, 
London, 1893, p. 173. 
8 Vaughan, J. i Notes upon the Drugs observed at Aden (Arabia). In Pharm. Journ. 
XXI (1852), 226—29, 268- 71, (1853) 385-88. 
