BOTANY. 



Mis'ory. 



,I Western 

 Asia. 



La Billar- 

 rfiere. 



tleman of the name of Radennarcher, between the 

 years 1780 and 1782 at Batavia, on the plants of the 

 r ' island of Java, und,er the title of Aa>/y.s tier plan- 

 ten, die gevond&i warden op het eiland Java. And 

 in 1795, appeared the first volume of a very splendid 

 work in folio, on the flora of the Coromandel coast, 

 Roxburgh, by Dr William Roxburgh, F. R. S. a native of Scot- 

 land, formerly resident at Samulcottah, and now at 

 Calcutta. It was published at the expence of the 

 East India Company with the following title, Plants 

 of the Coast of Coroi//andcl, elected from drawings 

 and descriptions presented to ike Hon. Court of Di- 

 rectors of the East India Company, published by their 

 order, under the direction of Sir J. Banks, Bart, and 

 contains good descriptions of a great many unknown 

 plants, illustrated with most beautiful plates. 



The state~of our knowledge, with respect to the 

 flora of Western Asia on the other hand, has not been 

 materially improved since the beginning of this period, 

 except in so far as we are indebted to the meritorious 

 zeal of Dr Schreber, in furnishing us with excellent 

 characters of the plants collected by Gundelsheimer, 

 the companion of Tournefort, in his Eastern journey , 

 to the researches of the unfortunate Professor Forskarj 

 already referred to, in Arabia, and to the discoveries 

 made within these few years by James Julian La Bil- 

 lardiere, physician at Paris. This last gentleman, af- 

 ter surveying the mountains of Savoy and Dauphiny, 

 set out on a journey of discovery, which he meant to 

 prosecute under the auspices of de Vergennes, the 

 French minister at Constantinople, as far as the Cas- 

 pian Sea : but when he had arrived in Syria in the 

 beginning of the year 1787, he found himself under 

 the necessity of altering his plan, on account of the 

 plague which was at that time raging in the coun- 

 tries he had purposed to visit, and to confine his tra- 

 vels to Syria alone. His expectation, as a botanist, 

 was of course so far disappointed ; but yet he suc- 

 ceeded in discovering several new plants ; and, on his 

 return home again, began to describe them in a masterly 

 manner in a work in 4to, illustrated with neatly exe- 

 cuted plates, entitled, Icones Plantarum Syria; ra- 

 riorwn descriptionibus et observationibus ilMstrala; ; 

 part of which appeared in 1791- The rest, however, 

 we regret to say, has not yet been published. 



With respect to the flora of Siberia, or Northern 

 Asia, we have only to observe, that though the ad- 

 ditional information which we have procured since 

 the days of John George Gmelin has been somewhat 

 aided by communications from Laxman, Lerche, and 

 two or three others, in periodical transactions, it has 

 been chiefly owing to the skill and exertion of three 

 j. G. Geor- indefatigable travellers, John Gottlieb Georgi, a na- 

 I!G Gme- *' ve ^ P meran " a a "d Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin, and 

 lin. Peter Simon Pallas, whom we have mentioned above. 



P. S. Pallas. The discoveries of the two former are to be found in 

 the account which was given to the world of their re- 

 spective travels, and those of the latter, to a certain 

 extent, in his Flora Rossica ; ieu Stirpium Imperil 

 Jiossici per Eitropam et Asiam indigenarum descrip- 

 >tones.et icones: for it is proper to observe, that the 

 Urst volume of this last elegant and accurate work, 

 consisting of two parts, which were published in 1784 

 and 1788, is the only one which has hitherto appear- 

 1 



iiv Siberia, 

 or North- 

 ern Asia. 



ed. It is to be hoped, however, for the sak> of the I- 

 science, that though the Empress Catherine, who pa- *- v ' ' 

 tronised the earlier labours of Pallas, is gone; a simi- 

 lar patronage on the part of her grandson will yet 

 enable him to bring the remaining part of his work 

 before the public, in a style of execution not unwor- 

 thy of the subject. 



On the eastern side of Asia, the inveterate jealousy In Eastern 

 of the Chinese has long presented an insurmountable Asia. 

 obstacle to our getting properly acquainted with the 

 botany of this widely extended empire : so that at 

 this day we are nearly in the same state in which we 

 have been for above half a century, (that is, since the 

 publication of Osbeck's Voyage to China,') except 

 that we occasionally meet with descriptions of insu- 

 lated plants in periodical journals, or the miscellane- 

 ous writings of a few modern authors. With respect, 

 however, to the indigenous flora of that part of 

 Eastern Asia, which goes under the name of Cochin- 

 China, our information has been very considerably - 

 augmented in consequence of the zealous assiduity of 

 John de Loureiro, a Portuguese missionary. This LouraroV 

 gentleman having found it impossible to ingratiate 

 himself with the natives, so as to be useful to them, 

 without some knowledge of medicine, began early to 

 turn his attention to the productions of the vegetable 

 kingdom, with the view of gaining a qualification, 

 which he felt to be indispensible to the success of his 

 mission ; and having by degrees come to look upon 

 plants with the eye of a botanist, and to consider the 

 study of them as a source of mental improvement and 

 satisfaction, as well as of general utility, he naturally 

 gave a wider range to his inquiries, and by collecting 

 from all quarters, became extensively acquainted with 

 the indigenous flora of Cochin-China, and to a cer- 

 tain extent with that even of the contiguous parts of 

 China and India. At length, after a residence of 30 

 years, he quitted that country, and returned home to 

 Lisbon, having touched at Mozambique, and gathered 

 a few South African plants in his way ; and in 1790, 

 he proceeded to lay the fruit of his labour and research 

 before the public, in a work of great merit and infor- 

 mation, entitled, Flora Cochinchinensis, sistens Plan- 

 tas in Regno Cochin China nascentes quilms accedwit 

 alice observntte in Sinensi imperio, Africa Orientals, 

 Lidiceque locis variis. To what has been now said 

 with respect to Eastern Asia, we may add, that we 

 have also become much better acquainted with the 

 indigenous plants of Japan, and the other islands im- 

 mediately contiguous to it : for professor Thunberg Thuriberg. 

 spent the greater part of the years 1775 and 1776 in 

 exploring them ; and after his return to Europe, put 

 the world in possession of the large harvest of disco- 

 very which he had made, by the publication of his 

 Flora Japonica ; a work, in which he has so far de- 

 viated from the method of his illustrious master, as to 

 supersede the twentieth, twenty-first, twenty-second, 

 and twenty-third classes, but which, if we look to the 

 conciseness, elegance, and accuracy of his definitions, 

 may be recommended as a model for general imitation. 

 The Flora Japonica was published in one pretty 

 large octavo volume, with 39 plates, in 1784- : and 

 since that time, hf has begun to publish a series of 

 engravings in folio, illustrative of the same subject, 



