838 TO THE KHASIA MOUNTAINS 
The vast extent of the collections and the amount of labour 
to be expended upon them at home appears from the following : 
Thomson's collections went home in April by the ' Welling- 
ton ' in 28 boxes, directed to the India House. One box 
contains his books ; he gave the whole collection to the 
' India House,' being unable to pay the carriage of his own 
private ones, formed previous to the Thibet mission, to 
Calcutta. If Government do not do something, nothing 
can come of either Tom's or my collections ; they cannot 
even be housed without. The collection you will receive (I 
hope have received) per ' Queen ' will form at the outside 
one quarter of the bulk of what I shall have, and we are now 
packing in much larger paper layer over layer of plants to 
suffocation. How Bentham would storm, I often think, 
but we can neither afford paper, nor room, nor carriage. 
Luckily they are beautifully dried and all large specimens, 
but the separation will require great space, time, and un- 
remitted labor. 
We left the hills on the 10th, and I had the pleasui'e of 
seeing all stowed safe away in a large boat hired to send aU 
to Falconer's from Punduah. The dried plants in 70 bales 
are camphored and put up like bales of cotton in gunny ^ 
tight and dry. I could get no boxes. The woods. Palms, 
Bamboos, &c., are similarly put up, but, being very large, 
some 10 feet, they got a ducking going down the hill on 
men's backs. I hope none are injured and they had all 
• dried when I followed them. Seven Ward's cases are full 
of Palms, Pines, a few Oaks and Larch, Nepenthes, &c. 
The Palms look splendidly ; amongst them a new species 
oiWallichia, 20 feet high. There are also boxes with smaller 
things and bottles with .fruits and flowers of more than 
800 species of plants in spirits. 
As to the Calami and Bamboos, I ticketed them, wrapping 
the tickets up in folds of paper, but I doubt their surviving ; 
and I do not see how they can be made available for the 
museum, except by Thomson or myself. The same may be 
said of the woods, tree-ferns, &c., which can only be worked 
up with the herbarium, and that will be a work of great 
time and trouble. I wish very much that the Government 
^ A coarse material used for sacking, made from jute fibre. 
