INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 55 



peninsula and Eastern Bengal. The 'Flora Javse' was com- 

 menced in 1828, and the 'Rumphia' m 1835, each of which 

 consists of several folio volumes, illustrated with a profusion 

 of admirable coloured plates, in many cases accompanied by 

 anatomical details of rare excellence ; these are amongst the 

 most splendid and learned botanical works of the age, and 

 have placed their author high in the rank of botanists. In 

 them many of the defective parts of the Bijdragen are worked 

 up and illustrated, and in the ' Museum Botanicum Lugduno- 

 Batavum,' an octavo periodical, with outline plates, containing 

 admirable analyses, commenced in 1852, we have careful de- 

 scriptions of more of these, and of still other genera and spe- 

 cies of Java, Borneo, Molucca, and Japan plants. 



The Museum' at Leyden is a rich store of botanical mate- 

 rials, which have been accumulating for many years from all 

 the Dutch possessions in the east and west ; and it is exceed- 

 ingly to be regretted, for the sake of science, and the honour 

 of the Dutch Government, which has patronized botany to 

 an extent unsurpassed by any other country, that the enor- 

 mous piles of duplicates which they possess should be with- 

 held from the scientific institutions of Europe and America. 



The beautiful folio volume of M. Korthals, ' Kruidkunde,' 

 or Botany of the Dutch East Indian possessions, is another 

 monument of the munificence of the Dutch Government. It 

 contains seventy coloured plates, illustrating, amongst other 

 natural orders, that of Nepenthacese. 



The botanical Professors De Vriesc, of Leyden, and Miquel 

 of Amsterdam, have laboured long and successfully in Indian 

 botany, and we owe to their industry and energy many im- 

 portant memoirs ; and to their liberality most valuable her- 

 baria, procured in some instances at their own cost. M. Mi- 

 quel's monographs of the difiicult orders Piperaceae and Fici 

 are standard works of essential service to us as Indian bota- 

 nists, though we do not concur in the author's limitations of 

 genera. M. Miquel has also named the Canara and Nilghiri 

 collections distributed by Hohenacker ; but any approach to 



