On the Botany of India. 361 



any known law that regulates the embellishment of the face of 

 nature ; where the orange and the lime, the shaddock, the pine- 

 apple and the banana, grow almost side by side with the oak, the 

 bramble, and the chesnut; which, in one district, consists of roses, 

 elms, currants, raspberries, and wild flowers most similar to those of 

 Europe; and in another, is so entirely tropical, that the trees are 

 mangosteens and mangoes, and their inhabitants the parasitical 

 loranthus, or the fantastic orchis, while the woods are of teak and 

 sissoo, choked up by huge lianes ; in which the sensible properties 

 are so elaborated, that the very nettles become deadly, forest trees 

 produce blindness, by mere contact with their juices, the poisons are of 

 unheard-of virulence, and yet every sense is delighted by the fragrance 

 of flowers of the most splendid colours, or by the rich flavour of the 

 most luscious fruits. 



The botany of this remarkable country has not failed to excite 

 attention from the earliest periods. To say nothing of the Arabians, 

 who first introduced ginger from Calicut to Spain who described 

 the pepper plant that climbs upon other trees, hiding its fruit beneath 

 its leaves, lest the former be scorched up who brought the sugar- 

 cane from the banks of the Ganges ; discovered the true camphor 

 tree of Sumatra ; distinguished the rhubarb that grows on the con- 

 fines of China from the rheum of the Greeks ; and made known the 

 tamarind, the cotton plant, the tea tree, the nutmeg, and the cinna- 

 mon ; and to pass by the now-forgotten names of Garcias ab Orta, 

 Acosta, I^inschoten, and Jacob Bont, there are two works that 

 especially claim our attention. 



In x the middle of the seventeenth century, a Dutch Viceroy of 

 Malabar, named Henry van Rheede tot Drakenstein, collected by 

 means of Brahmins, missionaries, and others, a great store of draw- 

 ings and descriptions of the more important plants of his govern- 

 ment, which were subsequently published between the years 1676 

 and 1703, in twelve volumes, folio. Like the ' Flora Batava,' now 

 publishing at the expense of the King of the Netherlands, the skill 

 of the subordinate agents was by no means commensurate with the 

 liberality of their princely employers, whose treasures were unfor- 

 tunately lavished upon a work that was far from answering to the 

 charges that were incurred in its publication. About seven hundred 

 indifferent figures, accompanied by miserable descriptions, were the 

 whole result of Van Rheede's patronage. 



About the same time, the Flora of Insular India was investigated 

 by George Everhard Rumf, a Dutch merchant and governor of 

 Amboyna, whose collections were published in seven volumes folio, 

 by John Burmann, between 1741 and 1751. Unlike Van Rheede, 

 Rumf appears to have been a skilful botanist for his time, as well as 

 a munificent patron ; and hence both the figures and descriptions 

 of the * Herbarium Amboinense,' as his work is called, are of a 

 character far superior to that of his predecessor. Like all drawings 

 of natural history of the day, the figures are inaccurate in their 

 details, but they are far from bad general representations ; the 



