30 TTTE .TOURXAL OF BOTAXT 



son John was In South Africa in ISOl, a year which falls within the 

 period alluded to hv Don. 



As the writer had occasion to explain in his " Memoir of Francis 

 Buchanan (afterwards Hamilton)," Roxburgh left Calcutta for the 

 Cape early in 1798 ; a letter dated 16 October, 179S, was sent to 

 Roxburgh from India and reached him while he was in South Africa ; 

 in October 1799, Roxburgh had just returned to Calcutta from the 

 Cape. We know that on the return voyage Roxburgh's vessel was 

 detained at Madras sufficiently long to admit of his being received 

 in audience by the second Lord Clive, then Governor of Fort 

 St. George. There must have been a corresponding detention at 

 Madras on the outward journey, and the known facts render it 

 reasonable to surmise that in 1798 the Moravian brethren, satisfied 

 that John Roxburgh now knew all they could teach him at 

 Tranquebar, handed him over to his father as fit for the latter's 

 " Assistance " during this South African visit. 



The matter of John Roxburgh's age in 1798 is of secondary im- 

 portance. We know that Roxburgh, as was usual with medical 

 officers towards the close of the XVIIIth Century, made several 

 voyages as Surgeon on East Indiamen before he was definitely 

 appointed to the Medical Service of the H.E.I. Company. The 

 dates of these voyages have not, however, been supplied us by 

 Dr. Roxburgh's biographers, and we have as 3^et no knowledge of his 

 various ports of call. When, at last, his definite appointment came 

 about, we know that he took up his duties at Madras in 1776. The 

 probability^ therefore, is that in 1798, when Roxburgh asked the 

 Moravian brethren to let him have his boy back, the latter was 

 at most somewhere about sixteen. He cannot, then, have much 

 more than attained his majority when he accompanied his father to 

 the Cape in 1798 or joined his father there in 1799. The young- 

 man appears to have given his father such satisfaction as a botanical 

 collector while m his company that Roxburgh decided to leave John 

 behind, to collect South African seeds and plants and herbarium 

 specimens, when he himself returned to India in 1799. 



Leaving " John " Roxburgh in South Afriqa, Ave now turn to 

 "Roxburgh , junior," cited by his father (Hort. Beng. p. 56 and 

 Flora Indica, vol. iii. p. 338) as author of the name Flfmuigia 

 frostrata. The individual alluded to was William Roxburgh, junior 

 {Flora Indica, vol. i. p. 554), whose name is associated in the first 

 volume of that work with the finding of fifteen species, in the 

 second volume with the collection of six species, in the third with 

 the discovery of twelve, and in the supplementary Tcryptogamic) 

 portion, which Griffith first had ])rinted in the Calcutta Jo2(rnal of 

 Natural Ifistori/ in 1814, with the communication of eleven species. 

 As in the case of " John " Roxburgh, we do not yet know Avhere or 

 when William junior, was born. In William's case, moreover, we 

 are unable to say where or how he was educated. We know, however, 

 that by 1799, when his father returned from the Cape, he had reached 

 an age which justified the Government at Fort William in appointing 

 him Assistant to the Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden. 

 A letter from Mysore written in 1800 by Buchanan to Roxburgh 



