For Mininale
If this proposal for the establishment of a Botanical Garden is approved, the sanction of the Treasury must be obtained.
I am inclined to think that the colony revenue would be better spent on sanitary arrangements or the maintenance of a health office than on a Botanical Garden.
Sir J.B. Leveson proposes that the expense of sending him out should be borne by the British Treasury.
Lord Palmerston
Stm N.12
The value of a Botanical Garden at Hong Kong, if well managed, would arise from the facilities it would afford for bringing at once into cultivation many of the valuable vegetable productions of Southern China - to transport to a great distance, plants and even seeds is a difficult and expensive operation, hardly to be undertaken without this; and it is likely that the result would repay the trouble. In this garden, various plants introduced would be tested by actual observation, and found out by the competent person on the spot, many objects that might otherwise remain unknown.
In the present state of the Hong Kong finances, we may hope that the expenditure will not be found to interfere with other useful objects. As no portion of the Parliamentary vote is called for this, I think it would be ungracious to object to the cost of sending out the Botanist when found, but I would propose to write...