Thus, in spite of one or two disappointments, the great object of the undertaking sanctioned by the Secretary of State for India was fully attained. By the spring of 1861 a large supply of plants and young seedlings was established in the Neilgherry hills; and at the present moment we have thousands of chinchona-plants, of all the valuable species, flourishing and multiplying rapidly in Southern India, and in Ceylon. When the unprecedented length of the voyages and the numerous trans-shipments are taken into consideration, the wonder is that any of the plants should have been successfully conveyed from the slopes of the Andes in South America to the ghauts in Southern India, over thousands of miles, through every variety of climate, and subject to the risk of crossing the isthmus of Panama, of changing steamers at the island of St. Thomas, at Southampton, at Suez, and at Bombay, and of the journey through Egypt. The most important introduction of plants into India, by means of Wardian cases, previous to the arrival of the chinchonas, was that of the tea from China in 1849 and following years by Mr. Fortune. On those occasions the cases were strongly and coarsely made, the glass shades firmly fixed, and the glass itself thick, and glazed in pieces of moderate size. The frames were protected by a grating of iron wire, with a canvas covering capable of being unrolled so as to screen the plants from the direct rays of the sun, if necessary. The soil was not less than eight or ten inches deep, and kept down by cross-battens, and the plants were fairly established in it before starting. In 1849 Mr. Fortune sowed large quantities of seeds in the cases, between rows of young plants, which germinated on their way from China to India, and reached their destination in the Himalayas in good condition. Out of 250 tea-plants, 215 arrived in perfect order.[386] But it was an easy process to convey plants by the short voyage from China to Calcutta, when compared with the introduction of plants from the western coast of South America into India; and the performance of the latter feat, in the case of the chinchona-plants under Mr. Cross's care, is undoubtedly the most extraordinary success of the kind that has yet been achieved.