BUBDEN OF INDIAN COLLECTIONS 361 
period to the * Icones Plantarum ' (Sir William's series of 
illustrations of remarkable and interesting plants), the ' Kew 
Journal of Botany,' the Gardeners' Chronicle, and the * Pro- 
ceedings of the Linnean Society,' two of these monographs 
being written in collaboration with Thomson.^ 
The work finally involved the arranging and identification 
of their vast number of specimens so that the duplicates might 
be distributed among other public and private collections. 
The heavy burden of this task finds a constant echo in the 
letters of these years, the more so as it was suddenly doubled. 
For, to quote the obituary in the Kew Bulletin : 
Before this work had been completed the Indian collec- 
tions of Falconer, Griffith, and Heifer, made over to Kew 
from the cellars of the East India House, had to be dealt 
with in the same manner. The latter task had not been 
completed when Thomson departed, but another smaller 
though very important one was successfully accomphshed. 
Besides the three collections mentioned, the residuum of the 
Indian Herbarium distributed by WalUch on behalf of the 
Honourable East India Company was also entrusted to Kew. 
The distribution of this great collection took place between 
1828 and 1832 ; there was consequently no set of its plants 
at Kew. In this Kew did not stand alone ; the herbarium 
attached to the Koyal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, at whose 
cost and for whose benefit the collection had been brought 
together, was in hke case. By a happy chance the friends 
were thus enabled to fill more or less satisfactorily a great 
hiatus in the herbaria of both gardens ; a set, fairly complete, 
so far at least as the plants collected by Wallich himself are 
concerned, was made up and laid into the herbarium at Kew, 
while a similar set was taken to Calcutta by Thomson (who 
now succeeded to the Superintendentship there). 
Thus in April 1857 Bentham is told, 
I am still strugghng on with the general arrangement of 
the Herb. Ind. roughly into species and have only got down 
to Monopetalae. The number of sheets and specimens is 
frightful. I toil on and to little effect. 
^ See list of works, Appendix B. 
