WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE--FOUNDER OF THE AGRICULTURAL AND
HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA
Carey's relation to science and economics--State of the
peasantry--Carey a careful scientific observer--Specially a
botanist--Becomes the friend of Dr. Roxburgh of the Company's Botanic
Garden--Orders seeds and instruments of husbandry--All his researches
subordinate to his spiritual mission--His eminence as a botanist
acknowledged in the history of the science--His own botanic garden and
park at Serampore--The poet Montgomery on the daisies
there--Borneo--Carey's paper in the Asiatic Researches on the state of
agriculture in Bengal--The first to advocate Forestry in India--Founds
the Agri-Horticultural Society of India--Issues queries on agriculture
and horticulture--Remarkable results of his action--On the manufacture
of paper--His expanded address on agricultural reform--His political
foresight on the importance of European capital and the future of
India--An official estimate of the results in the present day--On the
usury of the natives and savings banks--His academic and scientific
honours--Destruction of his house and garden by the Damoodar flood of
1823--Report on the Horticultural Society's garden--The Society honours
its founder.
Not only was the first Englishman, who in modern times became a
missionary, sent to India when he desired to go to Tahiti or West
Africa; and sent to Bengal from which all Northern India was to be
brought under British rule; and to Calcutta--with a safe asylum at
Danish Serampore--then the metropolis and centre of all Southern Asia;
but he was sent at the very time when the life of the people could best
be purified and elevated on its many sides, and he was specially fitted
to influence each of these sides save one. An ambassador for Christ
above all things like Paul, but, also like him, becoming all things to
all men that he might win some to the higher life, Carey was
successively, and often at the same time, a captain of labour, a
schoolmaster, a printer, the developer of the vernacular speech, the
expounder of the classical language, the translator of both into
English and of the English Bible into both, the founder of a pure
literature, the purifier of society, the watchful philanthropist, the
saviour of the widow and the fatherless, of the despairing and the
would-be suicide, of the downtrodden and oppressed. We have now to see
him on the scientific or the physical and economic side, while he still
jealously keeps his strength for the one motive power of all, the
spiritual, and with almost equal care avoids the political or
administrative as his Master did. But even then it was his aim to
proclaim the divine principles which would use science and politics
alike to bring nations to the birth, while, like the apostles, leaving
the application of these principles to the course of God's providence
and the consciences of men. In what he did for science, for
literature, and for humanity, as in what he abstained from doing in the
practical region of public life, the first English missionary was an
example to all of every race who have followed him in the past century.
From Carey to Livingstone, alike in Asia and Africa, the greatest
Christian evangelists have been those who have made science and
literature the handmaids of missions.
Apart from the extreme south of the peninsula of India, where the
Danish missionaries had explored with hawk's eyes, almost nothing was
known of its plants and animals, its men, as well as its beasts, when
Carey found himself in a rural district of North Bengal in the closing
decade of the eighteenth century. Nor had any writer, official or
missionary, anywhere realised the state of India and the needs of the
Hindoo and Mohammedan cultivators as flowing from the relation of the
people to the soil. India was in truth a land of millions of peasant
proprietors on five-acre farms, rack-rented or plundered by powerful
middlemen, both squeezed or literally tortured by the Government of the
day, and driven to depend on the usurer for even the seed for each
crop. War and famine had alternated in keeping down the population.
Ignorance and fear had blunted the natural shrewdness of the
cultivator. A foul mythology, a saddening demon-worship, and an
exacting social system, covered the land as with a pall. What even
Christendom was fast becoming in the tenth century, India had been all
through the eighteen Christian centuries.
The boy who from eight to fourteen "chose to read books of science,
history, voyages, etc., more than others"; the youth whose gardener
uncle would have had him follow that calling, but whose sensitive skin
kept him within doors, where he fitted up a room with his botanical and
zoological museum; the shoemaker-preacher who made a garden around
every cottage-manse in which he lived, and was familiar with every
beast, bird, insect, and tree in the Midlands of England, became a
scientific observer from the day he landed at Calcutta, an agricultural
reformer from the year he first built a wooden farmhouse in the jungle,
as the Manitoba emigrant now does under very different skies, and then
began to grow and make indigo amid the peasantry at Dinapoor. He thus
unconsciously reveals himself and his method of working in a letter to
Morris of Clipstone:--
"MUDNABATI, 5th December 1797.--To talk of continuance of friendship
and warm affection to you would be folly. I love you; and next to
seeing your face, a letter from you is one of my greatest
gratifications. I see the handwriting, and read the heart of my
friend; nor can the distance of one-fourth of the globe prevent a union
of hearts.
"Hitherto I have refrained from writing accounts of the country,
because I concluded that those whose souls were panting after the
conversion of the heathen would feel but little gratified in having an
account of the natural productions of the country. But as intelligence
of this kind has been frequently solicited by several of my friends, I
have accordingly opened books of observation, which I hope to
communicate when they are sufficiently authenticated and matured. I
also intend to assign a peculiar share to each of my stated
correspondents. To you I shall write some accounts of the arts,
utensils, and manufactures of the country; to Brother Sutcliff their
mythology and religion; to Brother Ryland the manners and customs of
the inhabitants; to Brother Fuller the productions of the country; to
Brother Pearce the language, etc.; and to the Society a joint account
of the mission."
He had "separate books for every distinct class, as birds, beasts,
fishes, reptiles, etc." Long before this, on 13th March 1795, he had
written to the learned Ryland, his special correspondent on subjects of
science and on Hebrew, his first impressions of the physiography of
Bengal, adding: "The natural history of Bengal would furnish
innumerable novelties to a curious inquirer. I am making collections
and minute descriptions of whatever I can obtain; and intend at some
future time to transmit them to Europe."
"MUDNABATI, 26th November 1796.--I observed in a former letter that the
beasts have been in general described, but that the undescribed birds
were surprisingly numerous; and, in fact, new species are still
frequently coming under my notice. We have sparrows and
water-wagtails, one species of crow, ducks, geese, and common fowls;
pigeons, teal, ortolans, plovers, snipes like those in Europe; but
others, entirely unlike European birds, would fill a volume. Insects
are very numerous. I have seen about twelve sorts of grylli, or
grasshoppers and crickets. Ants are the most omnivorous of all
insects; we have eight or ten sorts very numerous. The termes, or
white ants, destroy everything on which they fasten; they will eat
through an oak chest in a day or two and devour all its contents.
Butterflies are not so numerous as in England, but I think all
different. Common flies and mosquitoes (or gnats) are abundant, and
the latter so tormenting as to make one conclude that if the flies in
Egypt were mosquitoes, the plague must be almost insupportable. Here
are beetles of many species; scorpions of two sorts, the sting of the
smallest not mortal; land crabs in abundance, and an amazing number of
other kinds of insects. Fish is very plentiful, and the principal
animal food of the inhabitants. I find fewer varieties of vegetables
than I could have conceived in so large a country. Edible vegetables
are scarce, and fruit far from plentiful. You will perhaps wonder at
our eating many things here which no one eats in England: as arum,
three or four sorts, and poppy leaves (Papaver somniferum). We also
cut up mallows by the bushes for our food (Job xxx. 4). Amaranths, of
three sorts, we also eat, besides capsicums, pumpkins, gourds,
calabashes, and the egg-plant fruit; yet we have no hardships in these
respects. Rice is the staple article of food...
"My love to the students. God raise them up for great blessings. Great
things are certainly at hand."
But he was also an erudite botanist. Had he arrived in Calcutta a few
days earlier than he did, he would have been appointed to the place for
which sheer poverty led him to apply, in the Company's Botanical
Garden, established on the right bank of the Hoogli a few miles below
Calcutta, by Colonel Alexander Kyd, for the collection of indigenous
and acclimatisation of foreign plants. There he at once made the
acquaintance, and till 1815 retained the loving friendship, of its
superintendent, Dr. Roxburgh, the leader of a series of eminent men,
Buchanan and Wallich, Griffith, Falconer, T. Thomson, and Thomas
Anderson, the last two cut off in the ripe promise of their manhood.
One of Carey's first requests was for seeds and instruments, not merely
from scientific reasons, but that he might carry out his early plan of
working with his hands as a farmer while he evangelised the people. On
5th August 1794 he wrote to the Society:--"I wish you also to send me a
few instruments of husbandry, viz., scythes, sickles, plough-wheels,
and such things; and a yearly assortment of all garden and flowering
seeds, and seeds of fruit trees, that you can possibly procure; and let
them be packed in papers, or bottles well stopped, which is the best
method. All these things, at whatever price you can procure them, and
the seeds of all sorts of field and forest trees, etc., I will
regularly remit you the money for every year; and I hope that I may
depend upon the exertions of my numerous friends to procure them.
Apply to London seedsmen and others, as it will be a lasting advantage
to this country; and I shall have it in my power to do this for what I
now call my own country. Only take care that they are new and dry."
Again he addressed Fuller on 22nd June 1797:--
"MY VERY DEAR BROTHER--I have yours of August 9, 16, which informs me
that the seeds, etc., were shipped. I have received those seeds and
other articles in tolerable preservation, and shall find them a very
useful article. An acquaintance which I have formed with Dr. Roxburgh,
Superintendent of the Company's Botanic Garden, and whose wife is
daughter of a missionary on the coast, may be of future use to the
mission, and make that investment of vegetables more valuable."
Thus towards the close of his six years' sacrifice for the people of
Dinapoor does he estimate himself and his scientific pursuits in the
light of the great conflict to which the Captain of Salvation had
called him. He is opening his heart to Fuller again, most trusted of
all:--
"MUDNABATI, 17th July 1799.--Respecting myself I have nothing
interesting to say; and if I had, it appears foreign to the design of a
mission for the missionaries to be always speaking of their own
experiences. I keep several journals, it is true, relating to things
private and public, respecting the mission, articles of curiosity and
science; but they are sometimes continued and sometimes discontinued:
besides, most things contained in them are of too general or trivial a
nature to send to England, and I imagine could have no effect, except
to mock the expectations of our numerous friends, who are waiting to
hear of the conversion of the heathen and overthrow of Satan's kingdom.
"I therefore only observe, respecting myself, that I have much proof of
the vileness of my heart, much more than I thought of till lately: and,
indeed, I often fear that instead of being instrumental in the
conversion of the heathen, I may some time dishonour the cause in which
I am engaged. I have hitherto had much experience of the daily
supports of a gracious God; but I am conscious that if those supports
were intermitted but for a little time, my sinful dispositions would
infallibly predominate. At present I am kept, but am not one of those
who are strong and do exploits.
"I have often thought that a spirit of observation is necessary in
order to our doing or communicating much good; and were it not for a
very phlegmatic habit, I think my soul would be richer. I, however,
appear to myself to have lost much of my capacity for making
observations, improvements, etc., or of retaining what I attend to
closely. For instance, I have been near three years learning the
Sanskrit language, yet know very little of it. This is only a specimen
of what I feel myself to be in every respect. I try to observe, to
imprint what I see and hear on my memory, and to feel my heart properly
affected with the circumstances; yet my soul is impoverished, and I
have something of a lethargic disease cleaving to my body...
"I would communicate something on the natural history of the country in
addition to what I have before written, but no part of that pleasing
study is so familiar to me as the vegetable world."
His letters of this period to Fuller on the fruits of India, and to
Morris on the husbandry of the natives, might be quoted still as
accurate and yet popular descriptions of the mango, guava, and custard
apple; plantain, jack, and tamarind; pomegranate, pine-apple, and
rose-apple; papaya, date, and cocoa-nut; citron, lime, and shaddock.
Of many of these, and of foreign fruits which he introduced, it might
be said he found them poor, and he cultivated them till he left to
succeeding generations a rich and varied orchard.
While still in Dinapoor, he wrote on 1st January 1798: "Seeds of sour
apples, pears, nectarines, plums, apricots, cherries, gooseberries,
currants, strawberries, or raspberries, put loose into a box of dry
sand, and sent so as to arrive in September, October, November, or
December, would be a great acquisition, as is every European
production. Nuts, filberts, acorns, etc., would be the same. We have
lately obtained the cinnamon tree, and nutmeg tree, which Dr. Roxburgh
very obligingly sent to me. Of timber trees I mention the sissoo, the
teak, and the saul tree, which, being an unnamed genus, Dr. Roxburgh,
as a mark of respect to me, has called Careya saulea."
The publication of the last name caused Carey's sensitive modesty
extreme annoyance. "Do not print the names of Europeans. I was sorry
to see that you printed that Dr. Roxburgh had named the saul tree by my
name. As he is in the habit of publishing his drawings of plants, it
would have looked better if it had been mentioned first by him."
Whether he prevailed with his admiring friend in the Company's Botanic
Garden to change the name to that which the useful sal tree now bears,
the Shorea robusta, we know not, but the term is derived from Lord
Teignmouth's name. Carey will go down to posterity in the history of
botanical research, notwithstanding his own humility and the accidents
of time. For Dr. Roxburgh gave the name of Careya to an interesting
genus of Myrtace[oe]. The great French botanist M. Benjamin Delessert
duly commemorates the labours of Dr. Carey in the Musée Botanique.
It was in Serampore that the gentle botanist found full scope for the
one recreation which he allowed himself, in the interest of his body as
well as of his otherwise overtasked spirit. There he had five acres of
ground laid out, and, in time, planted on the Linnæan system. The park
around, from which he had the little paradise carefully walled in, that
Brahmani bull and villager's cow, nightly jackal and thoughtless youth,
might not intrude, he planted with trees then rare or unknown in lower
Bengal, the mahogany and deodar, the teak and tamarind, the carob and
eucalyptus. The fine American Mahogany has so thriven that the present
writer was able, seventy years after the trees had been planted, to
supply Government with plentiful seed. The trees of the park were so
placed as to form a noble avenue, which long shaded the press and was
known as Carey's Walk. The umbrageous tamarind formed a dense cover,
under which more than one generation of Carey's successors rejoiced as
they welcomed visitors to the consecrated spot from all parts of India,
America, and Great Britain. Foresters like Sir D. Brandis and Dr.
Cleghorn at various times visited this arboretum, and have referred to
the trees, whose date of planting is known, for the purpose of
recording the rate of growth.
For the loved garden Carey himself trained native peasants who, with
the mimetic instinct of the Bengali, followed his instructions like
those of their own Brahmans, learned the Latin names, and pronounced
them with their master's very accent up till a late date, when
Hullodhur, the last of them, passed away. The garden with its tropical
glories and more modest exotics, every one of which was as a personal
friend, and to him had an individual history, was more than a place of
recreation. It was his oratory, the scene of prayer and meditation,
the place where he began and ended the day of light--with God. What he
wrote in his earlier journals and letters of the sequestered spot at
Mudnabati was true in a deeper and wider sense of the garden of
Serampore:--"23rd September, Lord's Day.--Arose about sunrise, and,
according to my usual practice, walked into my garden for meditation
and prayer till the servants came to family worship." We have this
account from his son Jonathan:--
"In objects of nature my father was exceedingly curious. His
collection of mineral ores, and other subjects of natural history, was
extensive, and obtained his particular attention in seasons of leisure
and recreation. The science of botany was his constant delight and
study; and his fondness for his garden remained to the last. No one
was allowed to interfere in the arrangements of this his favourite
retreat; and it is here he enjoyed his most pleasant moments of secret
devotion and meditation. The arrangements made by him were on the
Linnæan system; and to disturb the bed or border of the garden was to
touch the apple of his eye. The garden formed the best and rarest
botanical collection of plants in the East; to the extension of which,
by his correspondence with persons of eminence in Europe and other
parts of the world, his attention was constantly directed; and, in
return, he supplied his correspondents with rare collections from the
East. It was painful to observe with what distress my father quitted
this scene of his enjoyments, when extreme weakness, during his last
illness, prevented his going to his favourite retreat. Often, when he
was unable to walk, he was drawn into the garden in a chair placed on a
board with four wheels.
"In order to prevent irregularity in the attendance of the gardeners he
was latterly particular in paying their wages with his own hands; and
on the last occasion of doing so, he was much affected that his
weakness had increased and confined him to the house. But,
notwithstanding he had closed this part of his earthly scene, he could
not refrain from sending for his gardeners into the room where he lay,
and would converse with them about the plants; and near his couch,
against the wall, he placed the picture of a beautiful shrub, upon
which he gazed with delight.
"On this science he frequently gave lectures, which were well attended,
and never failed to prove interesting. His publication of Roxburgh's
Flora Indica is a standard work with botanists. Of his botanical
friends he spoke with great esteem; and never failed to defend them
when erroneously assailed. He encouraged the study of the science
wherever a desire to acquire it was manifested. In this particular he
would sometimes gently reprove those who had no taste for it; but he
would not spare those who attempted to undervalue it. His remark of one
of his colleagues was keen and striking. When the latter somewhat
reprehended Dr. Carey, to the medical gentleman attending him, for
exposing himself so much in the garden, he immediately replied, that
his colleague was conversant with the pleasures of a garden, just as an
animal was with the grass in the field."
As from Dinapoor, so from Serampore after his settlement there, an
early order was this on 27th November 1800:--"We are sending an
assortment of Hindoo gods to the British Museum, and some other
curiosities to different friends. Do send a few tulips, daffodils,
snowdrops, lilies, and seeds of other things, by Dolton when he
returns, desiring him not to put them into the hold. Send the roots in
a net or basket, to be hung up anywhere out of the reach of salt water,
and the seeds in a separate small box. You need not be at any expense,
any friend will supply these things. The cowslips and daisies of your
fields would be great acquisitions here." What the daisies of the
English fields became to Carey, and how his request was long after
answered, is told by James Montgomery, the Moravian, who formed after
Cowper the second poet of the missionary reformation:--
THE DAISY IN INDIA
"A friend of mine, a scientific botanist, residing near Sheffield, had
sent a package of sundry kinds of British seeds to the learned and
venerable Doctor WILLIAM CAREY. Some of the seeds had been enclosed in
a bag, containing a portion of their native earth. In March 1821 a
letter of acknowledgment was received by his correspondent from the
Doctor, who was himself well skilled in botany, and had a garden rich
in plants, both tropical and European. In this enclosure he was wont to
spend an hour every morning, before he entered upon those labours and
studies which have rendered his name illustrious both at home and
abroad, as one of the most accomplished of Oriental scholars and a
translator of the Holy Scriptures into many of the Hindoo languages.
In the letter aforementioned, which was shown to me, the good man
says:--'That I might be sure not to lose any part of your valuable
present, I shook the bag over a patch of earth in a shady place: on
visiting which a few days afterwards I found springing up, to my
inexpressible delight, a Bellis perennis of our English pastures. I
know not that I ever enjoyed, since leaving Europe, a simple pleasure
so exquisite as the sight of this English Daisy afforded me; not having
seen one for upwards of thirty years, and never expecting to see one
again.'
"On the perusal of this passage, the following stanzas seemed to spring
up almost spontaneously in my mind, as the 'little English flower' in
the good Doctor's garden, whom I imagined to be thus addressing it on
its sudden appearance:--
"Thrice welcome, little English flower!
My mother-country's white and red,
In rose or lily, till this hour,
Never to me such beauty spread:
Transplanted from thine island-bed,
A treasure in a grain of earth,
Strange as a spirit from the dead,
Thine embryo sprang to birth.
"Thrice welcome, little English flower!
Whose tribes, beneath our natal skies,
Shut close their leaves while vapours lower;
But, when the sun's gay beams arise,
With unabashed but modest eyes,
Follow his motion to the west,
Nor cease to gaze till daylight dies,
Then fold themselves to rest.
"Thrice welcome, little English flower!
To this resplendent hemisphere,
Where Flora's giant offspring tower
In gorgeous liveries all the year:
Thou, only thou, art little here,
Like worth unfriended and unknown,
Yet to my British heart more dear
Than all the torrid zone.
"Thrice welcome, little English flower!
Of early scenes beloved by me,
While happy in my father's bower,
Thou shalt the blythe memorial be;
The fairy sports of infancy,
Youth's golden age, and manhood's prime.
Home, country, kindred, friends,--with thee,
I find in this far clime.
"Thrice welcome, little English flower!
I'll rear thee with a trembling hand:
Oh, for the April sun and shower,
The sweet May dews of that fair land.
Where Daisies, thick as starlight, stand
In every walk!--that here may shoot
Thy scions, and thy buds expand
A hundred from one root.
"Thrice welcome, little English flower!
To me the pledge of hope unseen:
When sorrow would my soul o'erpower,
For joys that were, or might have been,
I'll call to mind, how, fresh and green,
I saw thee waking from the dust;
Then turn to heaven with brow serene,
And place in GOD my trust."
From every distant station, from Amboyna to Delhi, he received seeds
and animals and specimens of natural history. The very schoolboys when
they went out into the world, and the young civilians of Fort William
College, enriched his collections. To Jabez, his son in Amboyna, we
find him thus writing:--"I have already informed you of the luckless
fate of all the animals you have sent. I know of no remedy for the
living animals dying, but by a little attention to packing them you may
send skins of birds and animals of every kind, and also seeds and
roots. I lately received a parcel of seeds from Moore (a large boy
who, you may remember, was at school when the printing-office was
burnt), every one of which bids fair to grow. He is in some of the
Malay islands. After all you have greatly contributed to the
enlargement of my collection."
"17th September 1816.--I approve much of Bencoolen as a place for your
future labours, unless you should rather choose the island of
Borneo...The English may send a Resident thither after a time. I
mention this from a conversation I had some months ago on the subject
with Lord Moira, who told me that there is a large body of Chinese on
that island." They "applied to the late Lieut.-Governor of Java,
requesting that an English Resident may be sent to govern them, and
offering to be at the whole expense of his salary and government. The
Borneo business may come to nothing, but if it should succeed it would
be a glorious opening for the Gospel in that large island. Sumatra,
however, is larger than any one man could occupy." As we read this we
see the Serampore apostle's hope fulfilled after a different fashion,
in Rajah Brooke's settlement at Sarawak, in the charter of the North
Borneo Company, in the opening up of New Guinea and in the civilisation
of the Philippines by the United States of America.
To Roxburgh and his Danish successor Wallich, to Voigt who succeeded
Wallich in Serampore, and hundreds of correspondents in India and
Germany, Great Britain and America, Carey did many a service in sending
plants and--what was a greater sacrifice for so busy a man--writing
letters. What he did for the Hortus Bengalensis may stand for all.
When, in 1814, Dr. Roxburgh was sent to sea almost dying, Dr. Carey
edited and printed at his own press that now very rare volume, the
Hortus Bengalensis, or a Catalogue of the Plants of the Honourable East
India Company's Botanic Garden in Calcutta. Carey's introduction of
twelve large pages is perhaps his most characteristic writing on a
scientific subject. His genuine friendliness and humility shine forth
in the testimony he bears to the abilities, zeal, and success of the
great botanist who, in twenty years, had created a collection of 3200
species. Of these 3000 at least had been given by the European
residents in India, himself most largely of all. Having shown in
detail the utility of botanical gardens, especially in all the foreign
settlements of Great Britain, he declared that only a beginning had
been made in observing and cataloguing the stock of Asiatic
productions. He urged English residents all over India to set apart a
small plot for the reception of the plants of their neighbourhood, and
when riding about the country to mark plants, which their servants
could bring on to the nursery, getting them to write the native name of
each. He desiderated gardens at Hurdwar, Delhi, Dacca, and Sylhet,
where plants that will not live at Calcutta might prosper, a suggestion
which was afterwards carried out by the Government in establishing a
garden at Saharanpoor, in a Sub-Himalayan region, which has been
successfully directed by Royle, Falconer, and Jameson.
On Dr. Roxburgh's death in 1815 Dr. Carey waited to see whether an
English botanist would publish the fruit of thirty years' labour of his
friend in the description of more than 2000 plants, natives of Eastern
Asia. At his own risk he then, in 1820, undertook this publication, or
the Flora Indica, placing on the title-page, "All Thy works praise
Thee, O Lord--David." When the Roxburgh MSS. were made over to the
library of the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, the fourth and final volume
appeared with this note regarding the new edition:--"The work was
printed from MSS. in the possession of Dr. Carey, and it was carried
through the press when he was labouring under the debility of great
age...The advanced age of Dr. Carey did not admit of any longer delay."
His first public attempt at agricultural reform was made in the paper
which he contributed to the Transactions of the Bengal Asiatic Society,
and which appeared in 1811 in the tenth volume of the Asiatic
Researches. In the space of an ordinary Quarterly Review article he
describes the "State of Agriculture in the District of Dinapoor," and
urges improvements such as only the officials, settlers, and Government
could begin. The soils, the "extremely poor" people, their
"proportionally simple and wretched farming utensils," the cattle, the
primitive irrigation alluded to in Deuteronomy as "watering with the
foot," and the modes of ploughing and reaping, are rapidly sketched and
illustrated by lithographed figures drawn to scale. In greater detail
the principal crops are treated. The staple crop of rice in its many
varieties and harvests at different seasons is lucidly brought before
the Government, in language which it would have been well to remember
or reproduce in the subsequent avoidable famines of Orissa and North
Bihar. Indigo is set before us with the skill of one who had grown and
manufactured it for years. The hemp and jute plants are enlarged on in
language which unconsciously anticipates the vast and enriching
development given to the latter as an export and a local manufacture
since the Crimean War. An account of the oil-seeds and the faulty mode
of expressing the oil, which made Indian linseed oil unfit for
painting, is followed by remarks on the cultivation of wheat, to which
subsequent events have given great importance. Though many parts, even
of Dinapoor, were fit for the growth of wheat and barley, the natives
produced only a dark variety from bad seed. "For the purpose of making
a trial I sowed Patna wheat on a large quantity of land in the year
1798, the flour produced from which was of a very good quality." The
pulses, tobacco, the egg-plant, the capsicums, the cucumbers, the arum
roots, turmeric, ginger, and sugar-cane, all pass in review in a style
which the non-scientific reader may enjoy and the expert must
appreciate. Improvements in method and the introduction of the best
kinds of plants and vegetables are suggested, notwithstanding "the
poverty, prejudices, and indolence of the natives."
This paper is most remarkable, however, for the true note which its
writer was the first to strike on the subject of forestry. If we
reflect that it was not till 1846 that the Government made the first
attempt at forest conservancy, in order to preserve the timber of
Malabar for the Bombay dockyard; and not till the conquest of Pegu, in
1855, that the Marquis of Dalhousie was led by the Friend of India to
appoint Dietrich Brandis of Bonn to care for the forests of Burma, and
Dr. Cleghorn for those of South India, we shall appreciate the wise
foresight of the missionary-scholar, who, having first made his own
park a model of forest teaching, wrote such words as these early in the
century:--"The cultivation of timber has hitherto, I believe, been
wholly neglected. Several sorts have been planted...all over Bengal,
and would soon furnish a very large share of the timber used in the
country. The sissoo, the Andaman redwood, the teak, the mahogany, the
satin-wood, the chikrasi, the toona, and the sirisha should be
principally chosen. The planting of these trees single, at the
distance of a furlong from each other, would do no injury to the crops
of corn, but would, by cooling the atmosphere, rather be advantageous.
In many places spots now unproductive would be improved by clumps or
small plantations of timber, under which ginger and turmeric might be
cultivated to great advantage. In some situations saul...would
prosper. Indeed the improvements that might be made in this country by
the planting of timber can scarcely be calculated. Teak is at present
brought from the Burman dominions...The French naturalists have already
begun to turn their attention to the culture of this valuable tree as
an object of national utility. This will be found impracticable in
France, but may perhaps be attempted somewhere else. To England, the
first commercial country in the world, its importance must be obvious."
Ten years passed, Carey continued to watch and to extend his
agri-horticultural experiments in his own garden, and to correspond
with botanists in all parts of the world, but still nothing was done
publicly in India. At last, on 15th April 1820, when "the advantages
arising from a number of persons uniting themselves as a Society for
the purpose of carrying forward any undertaking" were generally
acknowledged, the shoemaker and preacher who had a generation before
tested these advantages in the formation of the first Foreign Mission
Society, issued a Prospectus of an Agricultural and Horticultural
Society in India, from the "Mission House, Serampore." The prospectus
thus concluded:--"Both in forming such a Society and in subsequently
promoting its objects, important to the happiness of the country as
they regard them, the writer and his colleagues will be happy in doing
all their other avocations will permit." Native as well as European
gentlemen were particularly invited to co-operate. "It is peculiarly
desirable that native gentlemen should be eligible as members of the
Society, because one of its chief objects will be the improvement of
their estates and of the peasantry which reside thereon. They should
therefore not only be eligible as members but also as officers of the
Society in precisely the same manner as Europeans." At the first
meeting in the Town Hall of Calcutta, Carey and Marshman found only
three Europeans beside themselves. They resolved to proceed, and in
two months they secured more than fifty members, several of whom were
natives. The first formal meeting was held on 14th September, when the
constitution was drawn up on the lines laid down in the prospectus, it
being specially provided "that gentlemen of every nation be eligible as
members."
At the next meeting Dr. Carey was requested to draw up a series of
queries, which were circulated widely, in order to obtain "correct
information upon every circumstance which is connected with the state
of agriculture and horticulture in the various provinces of India."
The twenty queries show a grasp of principles, a mastery of detail, and
a kindliness of spirit which reveal the practical farmer, the
accomplished observer, and the thoughtful philanthropist all in one.
One only we may quote:--"19. In what manner do you think the comforts
of the peasantry around you could be increased, their health better
secured, and their general happiness promoted?" The Marquis of Hastings
gladly became patron, and ever since the Government has made a grant to
the Society. His wife showed such an interest in its progress that the
members obtained her consent to sit to Chinnery for her portrait to
fill the largest panel in the house at Titigur. Lord Hastings added
the experimental farm, formed near Barrackpore, to the Botanic Garden,
with an immediate view to its assisting the Agricultural Society in
their experiments and pursuits. The Society became speedily popular,
for Carey watched its infancy with loving solicitude, and was the life
of its meetings. In the first eighty-seven years of its existence
seven thousand of the best men in India have been its members, of whom
seven hundred are Asiatics. Agriculturists, military and medical
officers, civilians, clergy, and merchants, are represented on its roll
in nearly equal proportions. The one Society has grown into three in
India, and formed the model for the Royal Agricultural Society of
England, which was not founded till 1838.
Italy and Scotland alone preceded Carey in this organisation, and he
quotes with approbation the action of Sir John Sinclair in 1790, which
led to the first inquiry into the state of British agriculture. The
Transactions which Carey led the Society to promise to publish in
English, Bengali, and Hindostani, have proved to be only the first of a
series of special periodicals representing Indian agriculture
generally, tea, and forestry. The various Governments in India have
economic museums; and the Government of India, under Lord Mayo,
established a Revenue and Agricultural Department expanded by Lord
Curzon. Carey's early proposal of premiums, each of a hundred rupees,
or the Society's gold medal, for the most successful cultivation on a
commercial scale of coffee and improved cotton, for the successful
introduction of European fruits, for the improvement of indigenous
fruits, for the successful introduction from the Eastern Islands of the
mangosteen or doorian, and for the manufacture of cheese equal to
Warwickshire, had the best results in some cases. In 1825 Mr. Lamb of
Dacca was presented by "Rev. Dr. Carey in the chair" with the gold
medal for 80 lbs. of coffee grown there. Carey's own head gardener
became famous for his cabbages; and we find this sentence in the
Society's Report just after the founder's death:--"Who would have
credited fifteen years ago that we could have exhibited vegetables in
the Town Hall of Calcutta equal to the choicest in Covent Garden?" The
berries two centuries ago brought from Arabia in his wallet by the
pilgrim Baba Booden to the hills of Mysore, which bear his name, have,
since that Dacca experiment, covered the uplands of South India and
Ceylon. Before Carey died he knew of the discovery of the indigenous
tea-tree in its original home on the Assam border of Tibet--a discovery
which has put India in the place of China as a producer.
In the Society's Proceedings for 9th January 1828 we find this
significant record:--"Resolved, at the suggestion of the Rev. Dr.
Carey, that permission be given to Goluk Chundra, a blacksmith of
Titigur, to exhibit a steam engine made by himself without the aid of
any European artist." At the next meeting, when 109 malees or native
gardeners competed at the annual exhibition of vegetables, the steam
engine was submitted and pronounced "useful for irrigating lands made
upon the model of a large steam engine belonging to the missionaries at
Serampore." A premium of Rs. 50 was presented to the ingenious
blacksmith as an encouragement to further exertions of his industry.
When in 1832 the afterwards well-known Lieutenant-Governor Thomason was
deputy-secretary to Government, he applied to the Society for
information regarding the manufacture of paper. Dr. Carey and Ram
Komal Sen were referred to, and the former thus replied in his usual
concise and clear manner:--
"When we commenced paper-making several years ago, having then no
machinery, we employed a number of native papermakers to make it in the
way to which they had been accustomed, with the exception of mixing
conjee or rice gruel with the pulp and using it as sizing; our object
being that of making paper impervious to insects. Our success at first
was very imperfect, but the process was conducted as follows:--
"A quantity of sunn, viz., the fibres of Crotolaria juncea, was steeped
repeatedly in limewater, and then exposed to the air by spreading it on
the grass; it was also repeatedly pounded by the dhenki or pedal, and
when sufficiently reduced by this process to make a pulp, it was mixed
in a gumla with water, so as to make it of the consistence of thick
soup. The frames with which the sheets were taken up were made of mat
of the size of a sheet of paper. The operator sitting by the gumla
dipped this frame in the pulp, and after it was drained gave it to an
assistant, who laid it on the grass to dry: this finished the process
with us; but for the native market this paper is afterwards sized by
holding a number of sheets by the edge and dipping them carefully in
conjee, so as to keep the sheets separate. They are afterwards dried,
folded, and pressed by putting them between two boards, the upper board
of which is loaded with one or more large stones.
"In the English method the pulp is prepared by the mill and put into
cisterns; the frames are made of fine wire, and the workman stands by
the cistern and takes up the pulp on the frames. The sheets when
sufficiently dry are hung on lines to dry completely, after which they
are sized, if sizing be required.
"We now make our paper by machinery, in which the pulp is let to run on
a web of wire, and passing over several cylinders, the last of which is
heated by steam, it is dried and fit for use in about two minutes from
its having been in a liquid state."
Since that reply the Government of India, under the pressure of the
home authorities, has alternately discouraged and fostered the
manufacture of paper on the spot. At present it is in the wiser
position of preferring to purchase its supplies in India, at once as
being cheaper, and that it may develop the use of the many paper-making
fibres there. Hence at the Calcutta Exhibition of 1881-82 the jurors
began their report on the machine and hand-made paper submitted to
them, with a reference to Carey and this report of his. The Serampore
mills were gradually crushed by the expensive and unsatisfactory
contracts made at home by the India Office. The neighbouring Bally
mills seem to flourish since the abandonment of that virtual monopoly,
and Carey's anticipations as to the utilisation of the plantain and
other fibres of India are being realised nearly a century after he
first formed them.
Carey expanded and published his "Address respecting an Agricultural
Society in India" in the quarterly Friend of India. He still thinks it
necessary to apologise for his action by quoting his hero, Brainerd,
who was constrained to assist his Indian converts with his counsels in
sowing their maize and arranging their secular concerns. "Few," he adds
with the true breadth of genius which converted the Baptist shoemaker
into the Christian statesman and scholar, "who are extensively
acquainted with human life, will esteem these cares either unworthy of
religion or incongruous with its highest enjoyments." When Carey
wrote, the millions of five-acre farmers in India were only beginning
to recover from the oppression and neglect of former rulers and the
visitation of terrific famines. Trade was as depressed as agriculture.
Transit duties, not less offensive than those of the Chinese, continued
to weigh down agricultural industry till Lord W. Bentinck's time and
later. The English Government levied an unequal scale of duties on the
staples of the East and West Indies, against which the former
petitioned in vain. The East India Company kept the people in
ignorance, and continued to exclude the European capitalist and captain
of labour. The large native landholders were as uneducated as the
cultivators. Before all Carey set these reforms: close attention to
the improvement of land, the best method of cropping land, the
introduction of new and useful plants, the improvement of the
implements of husbandry, the improvement of live stock, the bringing of
waste lands under cultivation, the improvement of horticulture. He
went on to show that, in addition to the abundance which an improved
agriculture would diffuse throughout the country, the surplus of grain
exported, besides "her opium, her indigo, her silk, and her cotton,"
would greatly tend to enrich India and endear Britain to her. "Whatever
may be thought of the Government of Mr. Hastings and those who
immediately preceded him for these last forty years, India has
certainly enjoyed such a Government as none of the provinces of the
Persian or the Roman Empire ever enjoyed for so great a length of time
in succession, and, indeed, one almost as new in the annals of modern
Europe as in those of India."
Carey found one of the greatest obstacles to agricultural progress to
be the fact that not one European owned a single foot of the soil, "a
singular fact in the history of nations," removed only about the time
of his own death. His remarks on this have a present significance:--
"It doubtless originated in a laudable care to preserve our Indian
fellow-subjects from insult and violence, which it was feared could
scarcely be done if natives of Britain, wholly unacquainted with the
laws and customs of the people, were permitted to settle
indiscriminately in India. While the wisdom of this regulation at that
time is not impugned, however, it may not be improper to inquire
whether at the present time a permission to hold landed property, to be
granted by Government to British subjects in India, according to their
own discretion, might not be of the highest benefit to the country, and
in some degree advantageous to the Government itself.
"The objections which have been urged against any measure of this
nature are chiefly that the indiscriminate admission of Europeans into
the country might tend to alienate the minds of the inhabitants from
Britain, or possibly lead to its disruption from Britain in a way
similar to that of America. Respecting this latter circumstance, it is
certain that, in the common course of events, a greater evil could
scarcely befall India. On the continuance of her connection with
Britain is suspended her every hope relative to improvement, security,
and happiness. The moment India falls again under the dominion of any
one or any number of native princes, all hope of mental improvement, or
even of security for person or property, will at once vanish. Nothing
could be then expected but scenes of rapine, plunder, bloodshed, and
violence, till its inhabitants were sealed over to irremediable
wretchedness, without the most distant ray of hope respecting the
future. And were it severed from Britain in any other way, the reverse
felt in India would be unspeakably great. At present all the learning,
the intelligence, the probity, the philanthropy, the weight of
character existing in Britain, are brought to bear on India. There is
scarcely an individual sustaining a part in the administration of
affairs who does not feel the weight of that tribunal formed by the
suffrages of the wise and the good in Britain, though he be stationed
in the remotest parts of India. Through the medium of a free press the
wisdom, probity, and philanthropy which pervade Britain exercise an
almost unbounded sway over every part of India, to the incalculable
advantage of its inhabitants; constituting a triumph of virtue and
wisdom thus unknown to the ancients, and which will increase in its
effects in exact proportion to the increase in Britain of justice,
generosity, and love to mankind. Let India, however, be severed from
Britain, and the weight of these is felt no more...
"It is a fact that in case of outrage or injury it is in most cases
easier for a native to obtain justice against a European, than for a
European to obtain redress if insulted or wronged by a native. This
circumstance, attended as it may be with some inconvenience, reflects
the highest honour on the British name; it is a fact of which India
affords almost the first instance on record in the annals of history.
Britain is nearly the first nation in whose foreign Courts of Justice a
tenderness for the native inhabitants habitually prevails over all the
partialities arising from country and education. If there ever existed
a period, therefore, in which a European could oppress a native of
India with impunity, that time is passed away--we trust for ever. That
a permission of this nature might tend to sever India from Britain
after the example of America is of all things the most improbable...
"Long before the number of British landholders in India shall have
become considerable, Penang and the Eastern Isles, Ceylon, the Cape,
and even the Isles of New South Wales, may in European population far
exceed them in number; and unitedly, if not singly, render the most
distant step of this nature as impracticable, as it would be ruinous,
to the welfare and happiness of India...
"British-born landholders would naturally maintain all their national
attachments, for what Briton can lose them? and derive their happiness
from corresponding with the wise and good at home. If sufficiently
wealthy, they would no doubt occasionally visit Britain, where indeed
it might be expected that some of them would reside for years together,
as do the owners of estates in the West Indies. While Britain shall
remain what she now is, it will be impossible for those who have once
felt the force of British attachments, ever to forego them. Those
feelings would animate their minds, occupy their conversation, and
regulate the education and studies of their children, who would be in
general sent home that they might there imbibe all those ideas of a
moral and intellectual nature for which our beloved country is so
eminent. Thus a new intercourse would be established between Britain
and the proprietors of land in India, highly to the advantage of both
countries. While they derived their highest happiness from the
religion, the literature, the philanthropy and public spirit of
Britain, they would, on the other hand, be able to furnish Britain with
the most accurate and ample information relative to the state of things
in a country in which the property they held there constrained them to
feel so deep an interest. The fear of all oppression being out of the
question, while it would be so evidently the interest not only of every
Briton but of every Christian, whether British or native, to secure the
protecting aid of Britain, at least as long as two-thirds of the
inhabitants of India retained the Hindoo or Mussulman system of
religion, few things would be more likely to cement and preserve the
connection between both countries than the existence of such a class of
British-born landholders in India."
It is profitable to read this in the light of subsequent events--of the
Duff-Bentinck reforms, the Sepoy mutiny, the government of the
Queen-Empress, the existence of more than three millions of Christians
in India, the social and commercial development due to the
non-officials from Great Britain and America, and the administrative
progress under Lord Curzon and Lord Minto.
There is one evil which Carey never ceased to point out, but which the
very perfection of our judicial procedure and the temporary character
of our land assessments have intensified--"the borrowing system of the
natives." While 12 per cent. is the so-called legal rate of interest;
it is never below 36, and frequently rises to 72 per cent. Native
marriage customs, the commercial custom of "advances," agricultural
usage, and our civil procedure combine to sink millions of the
peasantry lower than they were, in this respect, in Carey's time. For
this, too, he had a remedy so far as it was in his power to mitigate an
evil which only practical Christianity will cure. He was the first to
apply in India that system of savings banks which the Government has of
late sought to encourage.
At a time when the English and even Scottish universities denied their
honorary degrees to all British subjects who were not of the
established churches, Brown University, in the United
States--Judson's--spontaneously sent Carey the diploma of Doctor of
Divinity. That was in the year 1807. In 1823 he was elected a
corresponding member of the Horticultural Society of London, a member
of the Geological Society, and a Fellow of the Linnæan Society. To him
the latter year was ever memorable, not for such honours which he had
not sought, but for a flood of the Damoodar river, which, overflowing
its embankments and desolating the whole country between it and the
Hoogli, submerged his garden and the mission grounds with three feet of
water, swept away the botanic treasures or buried them under sand, and
destroyed his own house. Carey was lying in bed at the time, under an
apparently fatal fever following dislocation of the hip-joint. He had
lost his footing when stepping from his boat. Surgical science was
then less equal to such a case than it is now, and for nine days he
suffered agony, which on the tenth resulted in fever. When hurriedly
carried out of his tottering house, which in a few hours was scoured
away by the rush of the torrent into a hole fifty feet deep, his first
thought was of his garden. For six months he used crutches, but long
before he could put foot to the ground he was carefully borne all over
the scene of desolation. His noble collection of exotic plants,
unmatched in Asia save in the Company's garden, was gone. His
scientific arrangement of orders and families was obliterated. It
seemed as if the fine barren sand of the mountain torrent would make
the paradise a desert for ever. The venerable botanist was wounded in
his keenest part, but he lost not an hour in issuing orders and writing
off for new supplies of specimens and seeds, which years after made the
place as lovely if not so precious, as before. He thus wrote to Dr.
Ryland:--
"SERAMPORE, 22nd December 1823.
"MY DEAR BROTHER--I once more address you from the land of the living,
a mercy which about two months ago I had no expectation of, nor did any
one expect it more than, nor perhaps so much as, myself. On the 1st of
October I went to Calcutta to preach, and returned with another friend
about midnight. When I got out of the boat close to our own premises,
my foot slipped and I fell; my friend also fell in the same place. I
however perceived that I could not rise, nor even make the smallest
effort to rise. The boatmen carried me into the house, and laid me on
a couch, and my friend, who was a medical man, examined my hurt.--From
all this affliction I am, through mercy, nearly restored. I am still
very weak, and the injured limb is very painful. I am unable to walk
two steps without crutches; yet my strength is sensibly increasing, and
Dr. Mellis, who attended me during the illness, says he has no doubts
of my perfect recovery.
"During my confinement, in October, such a quantity of water came down
from the western hills, that it laid the whole country for about a
hundred miles in length and the same in breadth, under water. The
Ganges was filled by the flood, so as to spread far on every side.
Serampore was under water; we had three feet of water in our garden for
seven or eight days. Almost all the houses of the natives in that vast
extent of country fell; their cattle were swept away, and the people,
men, women, and children. Some gained elevated spots, where the water
still rose so high as to threaten them with death; others climbed
trees, and some floated on the roofs of their ruined houses. One of
the Church missionaries, Mr. Jetter, who had accompanied Mr. Thomason
and some other gentlemen to Burdwan to examine the schools there,
called on me on his return and gave me a most distressing account of
the fall of houses, the loss of property, the violent rushing of
waters, so that none, not even the best swimmers, dared to leave the
place where they were.
"This inundation was very destructive to the Mission house, or rather
the Mission premises. A slip of the earth (somewhat like that of an
avalanche), took place on the bank of the river near my house, and
gradually approached it until only about ten feet of space were left
between that and the house; and that space soon split. At last two
fissures appeared in the foundation and wall of the house itself. This
was a signal for me to remove; and a house built for a professor in the
College being empty, I removed to it, and through mercy am now
comfortably settled there.
"I have nearly filled my letter with this account, but I must give you
a short account of the state of my mind when I could think, and that
was generally when excited by an access of friends; at other times I
could scarcely speak or think. I concluded one or two days that my
death was near. I had no joys; nor any fear of death, or reluctance to
die; but never was I so sensibly convinced of the value of an ATONING
Saviour as then. I could only say, 'Hangs my helpless soul on thee;'
and adopt the language of the first and second verses of the
fifty-first Psalm, which I desired might be the text for my funeral
sermon. A life of faith in Christ as the Lamb of God who taketh away
the sin of the world, appeared more than ordinarily important to my
mind, and I expressed these feelings to those about me with freedom and
pleasure.
"Now, through the gracious providence of God, I am again restored to my
work, and daily do a little as my strength will admit. The printing of
the translations is now going forward almost as usual, but I have not
yet been able to attend to my duties in College. The affairs of the
Mission are more extended, and I trust in as prosperous a state as at
any former time. There are now many of other denominations employed in
Missions, and I rejoice to say that we are all workers together in the
work. The native churches were never in a better state, and the face
of the Mission is in every respect encouraging. Give my love to all
who know me.--I am very affectionately yours, W. CAREY."
Still more severe and disastrous in its effects was the cyclone of
1831. The former had desolated the open garden, but this laid low some
of the noblest trees which, in their fall, crushed his splendid
conservatory. One of his brethren represents the old man as weeping
over the ruin of the collections of twenty years. Again the Hoogli,
lashed into fury and swollen by the tidal wave, swept away the
lately-formed road, and, cutting off another fourth of the original
settlement of the Mission, imperilled the old house of Mr. Ward. Its
ruins were levelled to form another road, and ever since the whole face
of the right bank of the river has been a source of apprehension and
expense. Just before this, Dr. Staughton had written from America that
the interest on the funds raised there by Ward for the College would
not be sent until the trustees were assured that the money was not to
be spent on the teaching of science in the College, but only on the
theological education of Hindoo converts. "I must confess," was Carey's
reply, "I never heard anything more illiberal. Pray can youth be
trained up for the Christian ministry without science? Do you in
America train up youths for it without any knowledge of science?"
One of Dr. Carey's latest visits to Calcutta was to inspect the
Society's Garden then at Alipore, and to write the elaborate report of
the Horticultural Committee which appeared in the second volume of the
Transactions after his death. He there records the great success of
the cultivation of the West India arrowroot. This he introduced into
his own garden, and after years of discontinued culture we raised many
a fine crop from the old roots. The old man "cannot but advert, with
feelings of the highest satisfaction, to the display of vegetables on
the 13th January 1830, a display which would have done honour to any
climate, or to any, even the most improved system of horticulture...The
greater part of the vegetables then produced were, till within these
last few years, of species wholly unknown to the native gardeners."
When, in 1842, the Agri-Horticultural Society resolved to honour its
founder, it appropriately fell to Dr. Wallich, followed by the
president Sir J. P. Grant, to do what is thus recorded:--"Dr. Wallich
addressed the meeting at some length, and alluded to the peculiar
claims which their late venerable founder had on the affection of all
classes for his untiring exertions in advancing the prosperity of
India, and especially so on the members of the Society. He concluded
his address by this motion:--'That the Agricultural and Horticultural
Society of India, duly estimating the great and important services
rendered to the interests of British India by the founder of the
institution, the late Reverend Dr. William Carey, who unceasingly
applied his great talents, abilities, and influence in advancing the
happiness of India--more especially by the spread of an improved system
of husbandry and gardening--desire to mark, by some permanent record,
their sense of his transcendent worth, by placing a marble bust to his
memory in the Society's new apartments at the Metcalfe Hall, there to
remain a lasting testimony to the pure and disinterested zeal and
labours of so illustrious a character: that a subscription,
accordingly, from among the members of the Society, be urgently
recommended for the accomplishment of the above object.'"
One fact in the history of the marble bust of Carey, which since 1845
has adorned the hall of the Agricultural Society of India, would have
delighted the venerable missionary. Following the engraving from
Home's portrait, and advised by one of the sons, Nobo Koomar Pal, a
self-educated Bengali artist, modelled the clay. The clay bust was
sent to England for the guidance of Mr. J. C. Lough, the sculptor
selected by Dr. Royle to finish the work in marble. Mr. Lough had
executed the Queen's statue for the Royal Exchange, and the monument
with a reclining figure of Southey. In sending out the marble bust of
Carey to Calcutta Dr. Royle wrote,--"I think the bust an admirable one;
General Macleod immediately recognised it as one of your much esteemed
Founder."
The Bengal Asiatic Society, on the motion of the Lord Bishop and
Colonel Sir Jer. Bryant, entered these words on their Journal:--"The
Asiatic Society cannot note upon their proceedings the death of the
Rev. W. Carey, D.D., so long an active member and an ornament of this
Institution, distinguished alike for his high attainments in the
Oriental languages, for his eminent services in opening the stores of
Indian literature to the knowledge of Europe, and for his extensive
acquaintance with the sciences, the natural history and botany of this
country, and his useful contributions on every hand towards the
promotion of the objects of the Society, without placing on record this
expression of their high sense of his value and merits as a scholar and
a man of science; their esteem for the sterling and surpassing
religious and moral excellencies of his character, and their sincere
grief for his irreparable loss."