"Bencoolen; 13th August, 1818.
" You will lament to hear that we have lost Dr. Arnold : he fell a sacrifice to his exertions on my first tour into the interior, and died of fever about a fortnight ago. 202] " It is impossible I can do justice to his memory by any feeble encomiums I may pass on his character ; he was in everything what he should have been, devoted to science and the acquisition of knowledge, and aiming only at use- fulness.
" I had hoped, instead of the melancholy event I have now to communicate, that we should have been able to send you an account of our many interesting discoveries from the hand of Dr. Arnold. At the period of his death he had not done much ; all was arrangement for extensive acquirement in every branch of natural history. I shall go on with the collections as well as I can, and hereafter communicate with you respecting them, and in the mean time content myself with giving you the best account I can of the largest and most magnificent flower which, as far as we know, has yet been described. Fortunately I have found part of a letter from poor Arnold to some unknown friend, written while he was on board ship, and a short time before his death, from which the following is an extract.
" After giving an account of our journey to Passummah, he thus proceeds :
" ' But here (at Pulo Lebbar on the Manna River, two days' journey inland of I\Ianna) I rejoice to tell you I hap- pened to meet with Avhat I consider as the greatest prodigy of the vegetable v\'orld. I had ventured some way from the party, when one of the Malay servants came running to me with wonder in his eyes, and said, "Come with me, sir, come ! a flower, very large, beautiful, wonderful I" I immediately went with the man about a hundred yards in the jungle, and he pointed to a flower growing close to the ground under the bushes, which was truly astonishing. My first impulse was to cut it up and carry it to the hut. I therefore seized the Malay's parang (a sort of instrument
