372 History of Ceylon Botany. 



of specimens) to refer to any genus. The whole number of plants 

 enumerated is thus 657. In the herbarium itself he has added to 

 Hermann's labels a reference to the number of the species in his 

 own copy of the "Flora Zeylanica;'" and in his own copy of the 

 ' Musseum Zeylanicum,' now in the Linnean Society's library, ' he has 

 entered in the margin against each name the genus to which he 

 referred it.'* 'At this period of Linnaeus's career he had not yet 

 initiated his binomial system of nomenclature: thus no species in 

 the "Flora Zeylanica" are named in the modern sense, but are only 

 referred to their Linnean genera. When, however, in 1753, tnat 

 really epoch-making book, the "Species Plantarum," was published, 

 in which specific names were systematically employed, Linnaeus was 

 careful to quote under them the numbers of the " Fl. Zeylan.," and 

 thus the specimens of Hermann's herbarium become types for many 

 of Linnaeus's species. It is this, of course, which gives to this in- 

 teresting collection its great scientific value, and renders it an 

 important supplement to the herbarium of Linnaeus himself . . . . ; 

 especially as the large majority of the species in Hermann's her- 

 barium are unrepresented in the latter.' f 



A second edition of the ' Flora ' appeared in 1748, to some copies 

 of which is appended ' Nova genera plantarum zeylanicarum nuper 

 edita .... per C. M. Dassow, pp. 1-14, with an index.' This is 

 taken from the ' Amoenitates Academicae,' vol. i., No. 13, and is, no 

 doubt, Linnaeus's own work. The forty-three new genera here 

 described were afterwards incorporated into the fifth edition of the 

 'Genera Plantarum,' published in 1754;+ but Dr. Trimen does not 

 refer to them in the paper from which we have been quoting. 



Robert Knox, the first Englishman to publish an account of 

 Ceylon, was born in 1640 or 164 1, being the son of Robert Knox, 

 a Scotsman, a commander in the East India Company's navy, and a 

 cousin to John Strype, the antiquary. Knox was brought up at 

 Wimbledon, Surrey, where his mother died about 1655, and in 

 January, 1657, he sailed with his father to Madras. On the home- 

 ward voyage, in November, 1659, they were driven by stress of 

 weather into Cottier (Kottiyar) Bay, Ceylon, where Knox, his father, 

 and fourteen others were made prisoners. The father died in 

 captivity in 1660; but Knox remained a prisoner at large for nearly 

 twenty years, making several unsuccessful attempts to escape, and 

 supporting himself by knitting caps, lending out corn and rice, 

 and hawking goods. In September, 1679. with his faithful comrade, 

 Stephen Rutland, he escaped to the Dutch settlement of Aripo, on 

 the north-west coast, whence he was sent to Batavia, and so to 

 England. The East India Company took him into their service as- 

 mate: he rose to be commander, and died in London, July, 1720. 

 His narrative, written with the help of Robert Hooke, is entitled 



* Trimen, loc. cit., p. 130. 



+ Ibid. 



% Pulteney, ' General View of the Writings of Linnaeus ' (1781), p. 232. 



