PREFACE. 
‘Due present Fasciculus of Plants growing on the Coast of Coromandel, being the first of a progressive 
work, with which the Honourable Court of Directors of the East India Company has determined to 
favour the public, it is hoped, will prove as acceptable to the lovers of Botany in general, as useful 
at the Company’s establishments abroad. 
It is intended that the selection should be made from five hundred drawings and descriptions, pre- 
sented to the Honourable Court of Directors by Dr. William Roxburgh, one of the Company’s medical 
servants, and their Botanist in the Carnatic; and, with a more immediate view to utility, while 
preference will be given to subjects connected either with medicine, the arts, or manufactures, the 
liberality of the Honourable Court of Directors encourages the admission of new plants, or of such 
as have hitherto been imperfectly described, although their qualities and uses may as yet remain 
unexplored. 
After all that has been already done, India still presents a wide field for research ; and the progress 
made, of late years, in other branches of knowledge, affords room to expect material improvement in 
Natural History, if ardour for inquiry continues to prevail; if the means of making new acquisitions 
are facilitated ; and if a spirit of scientific emulation among the Company’s servants abroad, meets with 
such encouragement as must naturally tend to rescue many of those hours of leisure from indolent neglect, 
which (considering the fertile advantages of situation } might be employed with no less pleasure to the 
individual, than eventually to the public benefit. | 
Till within these forty years, Botany seems to have been little attended to in the Carnatic ; about 
which period, if not introduced, it was at least greatly promoted by a foreign naturalist. : 
John Gerard Koenig, a native (it is believed) of Courland, and a pupil of Linnzus, contemporary 
with the late Dr. Solander, had early distinguished himself, by his travels into Iceland, in the year 1765," 
and was honoured by having a plant named after him. 
The precise time of his setting out for India is not known, but it was probably in 1768; as in a letter 
to Linnzus, dated from Tranquebar, July 26, 1769, he refers to another letter written more than three 
months before, which is not found among a number of his letters from India, now in the possession of 
Dr. James Edward Smith. 
It appears that he went to India under the protection of the king of Denmark, partly as physician 
to the Danish settlement in the Carnatic, but chiefly for the purpose of making improvements in the 
natural history of that country ; and he resided for several years at Tranquebar, or in its vicinity, inde- 
fatigably employed in researches of various kinds. 
Koenig was singularly qualified for the employment he had engaged in. More covetous of fame than 
of fortune, he persevered in his pursuits with an enthusiasm that set bodily fatigue, spare meals, and 
a scorching climate at defiance; while the simplicity of his manners, and his unassuming readiness to 
impart knowledge to others, conciliated, almost at first sight, the benevolence of those with whom he 
conversed. Thus qualified for an inquisitive traveller, he became known at the Dutch, French, and 
British settlements on the Coast, which he occasionally visited in his excursions, and every where he 
acquired friends. 
* Mantissa Linn. Gen. Pl. p 15. 
