1. Colonel Robert Kyd was a British army officer stationed in India.
10 Facts About Robert Kyd
1. 2.
Robert Kyd founded the botanical garden at Calcutta in 1787.
3.
Robert Kyd was born in Scotland at Forfarshire, the son of Thomas, a merchant, and Rachel Eccles.
4.
Robert Kyd joined the Bengal Engineers as an ensign in 1764.
5.
Robert Kyd was then made a Secretary to the Military Department of Inspection in Bengal and continued in that post until his death.
6.
Robert Kyd proposed the idea of a botanic garden to the then Governor-General Sir John Macpherson, who passed on the idea to the Court of Directors of the East India Company.
7.
Robert Kyd's idea was that it should help in finding alternate sources of food to prevent famines and to identify plants that might be commercially useful.
8.
Robert Kyd had proposed that the botanical garden would help in introduction of economically important plants and help the East India Company "outstrip our rivals in every valuable production which nature has confined to this part of the globe".
9.
Robert Kyd made a request in his will that he be buried without any religious ceremony in the botanical garden that he founded, but was instead interred in South Park Street Cemetery.
10.
James Kyd became Company Master Builder after the retirement of A Waddell.