IOR/F/4/2444/134239

Table of Contents.

[pp 1-4] Extract from a General letter from the Government of Bengal to the Court of Directors in the Public Department (No.16 of 1850), dated 17th April 1850, regarding a proposal to establish an experimental garden at Darjeeling for the cultivation of certain medicinal plants. The proposal was refused.

[pp 6-11] Letter from H H Bowling, Civil Assistant Surgeon at Darjeeling, to A Campbell, Superintendent of Darjeeling, dated August 1849, regarding the peculiar facilities afforded by the Darjeeling station and its immediate vicinity for the cultivation and supply of several of the most important articles of the materia medica required for hospital use, appending the opinions of A Campbell, Dr J Hooker, Dr W B O'Shaughnessy, Editor of the Bengal Dispensatory and Pharmacopoeia, and Dr J R Withecombe, in Medical Charge of the Depot for European Troops, in favour of Bowling's proposition.

[pp 13-21] Letter from the Medical Board to Major General Sir John Hunter Littler, Deputy Governor of Bengal, dated Fort William 17th September 1849, regarding the practical difficulties concerning the proposed experimental garden, listing the medicinal plants which it had been suggested would thrive in it, and taking each in turn, stating the circumstance which, in the Board's opinion, made any change in the existing mode of supply from England altogether undesirable.

[pp 23-33] Letter from Dr H Falconer, Superintendent, H C Botanic Garden, to W Seton Karr, Under Secretary to the Government of Bengal, dated 28th November 1849, giving his opinion upon the proposal and his reasons for its discouragement, with some remarks about the individual plants which had been proposed for the experimental Garden.