Though there are
several very good gardens in the island, they are, according to all
accounts, greatly excelled in other parts of the presidency.
The system of cultivation carried on by the Horticultural Society
will, no doubt, tend very considerably to their improvement, while the
new method of conveying plants to and from distant places, in boxes
covered with glass, will soon enrich all the gardens, both in India
and at home, with interesting exotics. Several of these cases,
filled with bulbous and other roots, under the inspection of Messrs.
Loddiges, have arrived at Parell, and been planted out in pots; the
eases will be returned, filled with equally valuable specimens of
Indian products; and thus a continual interchange may be kept up.
I wished much to enrich the collection of foreign plants making by
the Royal Botanical Society of London, by some of the most interesting
specimens of Indian growth, feeling deeply interested in the success
of this institution; but not being a practical gardener myself, I have
as yet been unable to fulfil my intentions. I calculated, perhaps,
too strongly upon the desire of scientific people in Bombay to promote
objects of general utility at home, and see little chance, unless I
do every thing relating to the collecting, planting, packing, and
transmitting the plants with my own hands, of succeeding in sending
any thing to England.
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