addition to the Company's medical staff, which increased to such an extent that it required a separate organisation to control it. In 1786 a Board of Direction was formed with Anderson at its head, and thus the Madras Medical Service was definitely established.
Anderson was a great botanist, and might be called the pioneer of the Botanical Gardens of Madras, although he had nothing to do with the present Agri-Horticultural Society and its beautiful grounds in Teynampet (founded 1835-6). His experiments were confined to his own private garden, where he cultivated plants with a view of developing the indigenous resources of the country and of naturalising foreign plants of mercantile value.
A visitor to Madras in 1792 described him as being at that period an elderly man and somewhat infirm. The garden was shown by an assistant. There were a number of flowers and fruits foreign to Madras. Some of them, the loquat, pommelo (grape-fruit), custard-apple, and papaw, are well-known in the present day. The papaw, a fruit like a pear-shaped melon growing upon a small tree, is rich in digestive property, and yields a drug which is used in medicine.
Anderson died in 1809 at the age of seventy-two and was buried in the cemetery on the island. He corresponded with Sir Joseph Banks, sending him a great deal of information that is now incorporated in standard works on botany. He especially directed attention to the cultivation of sugar-cane, coffee, and cotton, which plants in the present day are permanently established in different parts of the Presidency.
At his death a number of plants were removed from his garden in Nungumbaukum to the compound of a house in Saidapet on the Mount Road. There they were carefully tended by another botanist, and the experiments were continued until 1836. The work by that time had
