456 - THE EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN BOTANY. 
many of the other treasures possessed by Sir Joseph Banks. 
Linneus’s Flora Zeylanica was followed in 1768 by the Flora 
Indica of Nicholas Burman (the younger Burman)—an inferior 
production, in which about fifteen hundred species are described. 
The herbarium on which this /lora Indica was founded now forms 
part of the great Herbarium Delessert at Geneva. 
e active study of botany on the binominal system of nomen- 
clature invented by Linnzus was initiated in India itself by Koenig, 
a pupil of that great reformer and systematist. It will be convenient 
to divide the subsequent history of botanic science in India into two 
periods, the first extending from Koenig’s arrival in India in 1768, 
to that of Sir Joseph Hooker’s arrival in 1848; and the second from 
P 
oo who were then settled near him in Southern India. 
f 
twelve, among whom may be mentioned Fleming, Hunter, Anderson, 
Berry, John, Roxburgh, Buchanan (afterwards Buchanan-Hamilton), 
and Sir William Jones, so well known as an Oriental scholar. 
reputation in Europe. Many plants of Indian origin came thus to 
be described by Retz, Roth, Schrader, Willdenow, Vahl, and Smith. 
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Hitherto botanical work in India had been more or less desultory, 
and it was not until the establishment in 1787 of the Botanic Garden 
at Calcutta that a recognized centre of botanical activity was estab- 
lished in British India. Robert Kyd, the founder of that garden, 
was more of a gardener than a botanist. He was, however, a man 
of much energy and shrewdness. The East India Company was 
still in 1787 a trading company, and a large part of their most 
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