Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/231

 proposal which seemed to promise a prospect of successful competition, the proposed garden was sanctioned, and Colonel Kyd was appointed honorary superintendent, a post which he held till his death, seven years later, in 1793.

Colonel Kyd had a house at Shalimar, in the neighbourhood of Howrah, on the opposite bank of the river to Calcutta, and adjoining the grounds was a plot of land which was selected for the Botanical Garden. The eastern end of this strip of land, which lay along the river-bank, was separated from Colonel Kyd's own grounds of Shalimar only by a ditch, crossed by a masonry bridge. All this portion of the garden—which had been occupied by a few native huts, whose owners, having no other title than possession, were compensated and removed—was laid out as a teak plantation, with the idea of obtaining timber for the Company's navy. But the trees did not thrive, and thirty-four years later, the experiment having proved a failure, the land was made over by the Government to Bishop Middleton, as a site for Bishop's College, founded in 1820. At the same time, a portion of Colonel Kyd's old garden was presented to the College by Sir C. T. Metcalfe, who then owned the property. The whole site is now in the occupapation of the Engineering College, for which the