46 FLORA INDICA. 



wards identifying the plants figured by Rumphius, and by so 

 doing has done good service to the antiquarian branch of 

 botany. 



The collections of Paul Hermann^ a medical man in Cey- 

 lon, have been rendered classical from having constituted the 

 materials for the 'Thesaurus Zeylanicus' of the elder Bur- 

 mann, published in Holland, and afterwards of the ' Flora 

 Zeylanica' of Linnseus. These collections form part of the 

 very valuable herbarium at the British Museum, and are of 

 great service in the determination of many of the doubtful 

 species of Linnseus. 



The 'Flora Cochinchinensis' of Loureiro, though it re- 

 lates to a country beyond our limits, contains so many forms 

 identical with those of Ava and Malaya, that we shall have 

 frequent occasion to refer to it. Father Loureiro, a native 

 of Portugal, resided for thirty-six years in the kingdom of 

 Cochin-China, whither he proceeded as a missionary, but 

 finding that Europeans were not permitted to reside there 

 without good cause, entered the service of the King, as chief 

 mathematician and naturalist*. Though he had no acquaint- 

 ance with the science of botany, the difficulty of procuring 

 European medicines induced him to direct his attention to na- 

 tive drugs ; and with a zeal of which we have unfortunately 

 too few instances, he prosecuted his botanical studies, and so 

 successfully, notwithstanding his want of early education, as 

 to produce a work of standard value. The ' Flora Cochin- 

 chinensis' was published at Lisbon, in two volumes quarto, 

 in 1790; and a second edition, edited by Willdenow, with a 

 few notes, appeared in octavo, at Berlin, in 1793. As was to 

 be expected, in a work devoted to the botany of a previously 

 unexplored tropical region, the ' Flora Cochinehinensis' con- 

 tained a great amount of novelty ; but the absence of plates, 

 and a defective terminology, caused by a want of familiarity 

 with the labours of other botanists, render the descriptions 



* He styles himself, in Ms own narrative, " rebus matliematicis et physicis 

 prtefectum." 



