Address of Thomas Bell, Esq., V.P.R.S., etc., the President, read at the anniversary meeting of the Linnean Society on Wednesday, May 24, 1854 : together with obituary notices of deceased members.

  • Thomas Bell
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of Thomas Bell, Esq., V.P.R.S., etc., the President, read at the anniversary meeting of the Linnean Society on Wednesday, May 24, 1854 : together with obituary notices of deceased members. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    one-and-twenty, in the capacity of surgeon to the Danisli settle- ment at Serampore. Immediately on his arrival in Bengal he be- came acquainted with Dr. Roxburgh, then Superintendent of tlie Company’s Botanic Garden at Calcutta, by whose friendship he continued to benefit until 1812, when the state of his health obliged him to proceed to the Mauritius. About a year after his return to India from this excursion, he received a commission in the medical service of the East India Company; and on the de- parture for England of Dr. Buchanan Hamilton, in the beginning of 1815, he was nominated to the temporary charge of the Calcutta Garden, which appointment was subsequently permanently confirmed on the recommendations of Dr. Fleming, Mr. Colebrooke and Sir Joseph Banks. At this time the Botanic Garden had been in existence nearly thirty years; during which period, by the combined exertions of Colonel Kyd, its founder, and of Dr. Roxburgh, it had become one of the finest establishments of the kind in existence ; and the unwearied energy of Dr. Wallich during the thirteen years that elapsed before his first return to Europe, not only added enormously to the extent of its collections, both living and preseired, but enabled it to transmit to Europe and America, for distribution among all the more important public and private gardens, a vast and quite un- precedented amount of plants and seeds. In 1820, Dr. Carey com- menced at Serampore the publication of Dr. Roxburgh’s manuscript ‘ Flora Indica,’ and to this volume, as well as to a second, which succeeded it in 1824, Dr. Wallich contributed numerous “Descrip- tions of Plants more recently discovered,’’ which greatly enhanced the value of the work. In the mean time Dr. Wallich had been deputed in 1820 on a botanical excursion to Nepaiil, which lasted till the beginning of 1822, and in the course of which he made very extensive collections of plants, a large proportion of which were entirely new, and sets of which were immediately transmitted with great liberality to several of the principal herbaria in London and elsewhere. A severe fever, caught on his descent to the plains, which he had in vain endeavoured to root out by a cruise at the head of the Bay of Bengal, confined him to his bed for two months, and compelled him to seek benefit from a voyage to Penang, Singapore, and some other places in the Straits of Malacca, from which, after an absence of five months, he returned on the last day of the year 1822, with renovated health and rich botanical collections. In 1824 he commenced the publication of a selection from his Nepaul collec- tions, under the title of “Tentamen Florae Napalensis Illustratae,” of which two numbers, each consisting of 25 plates, were issued. These plates were the botanical firstfruits of the new art of lithography
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