THE EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN BOTANY. 455 
eo ideas as a © the value of a correct and scientific know- 
e of them. Hortus Malabaricus was based on specimens 
comer [ Brabinine on drawings of many of the species made b 
atheeus, a Carmelite missionary at Cochin, and on descriptions 
Latin by Van Douet. The whole of these operations were carried on 
under the general superintendence of Casearius, a missionary at 
= in. Of this most interesting work the plates are the best part; 
n fact, some of these are so good that there is no difficulty in 
identifying them with the species which they are intended to 
he next important contribution to the botanical literature of 
Tropical ‘Asia deals rather with the plants of Dutch than of British 
ndia. It was the work of George Everhard Rumph (a native of 
and his Rito after pace for thirty years in the hands of the 
Dutch East India Co —_ was rescued from oblivion by Professor 
elder B 
John Burman, of Amsterdam (commonly known as the ur- 
man), and was se a under the title of Herbarium Amboinense, 
in seven folio volumes, between the years 1741 and 1755. The 
illustrations of this wo nk cover over a thousand species, but they 
are printed on six hundred and ninety-six plates. These illustrations 
are as much inferior to those of — Rheede’s book as the descriptions 
are superior to those of the lat 
The works of Plukenet, published i in London between 1696 and 
1705, in quo, contain figures of a number of Indian plants which, 
although small in size, are generally good portraits, and therefore 
deserve eat in an enumeration of botanical ae connected 
with British India. An account of the plants of Ceylon, under the 
name Thesaurus —— was published in 1737 by John Burman 
(the elder Burman), and in this work many of the plants which are 
common to that island mr to Peninsular India are described. 
Burman’s — was founded on the collections of Paul Hermann, 
publication of Burman’s account of it, into the hands of Linnzus, 
and that great systematist published in 1747 an account of such of 
the species as were adequately represented by specimens, under the 
title Flora Zeylanica, This Hermann Herbarium, consisting of 
six hundred species, may still be consulted at the British Museum, 
by the trustees of which institution it was acquired, along with 
