Plants of Prince of Wales Island, 



From a MS. in the British Museum. 



By Sir William Hunter, 



Surgeon to the East Indian Company. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The author of this manuscript now preserved in the British 

 Museum was Sir William Hunter, Surgeon to the East India 

 Company. He was born in 1755 and was trained for the medi- 

 cal profession. Being appointed doctor to an East Indiaman he 

 started for the East but his ship met with an accident in the 

 Syriam river in Pegu, being dismasted in rough weather. Dur- 

 ing the delay for repairs Hunter collected materials for his 

 work, " A concise account of the Kingdom of Pegu," which was 

 published in 1785. He became assistant-surgeon to the East 

 India Company in Bengal in 1783, and Surgeon in 1794. From 

 1798 to 1802, and again later he was Secretary to the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal. After the capture of Java by the English 

 in 1811 he was appointed Superintendent Surgeon there, and 

 died at Batavia in 1812. 



Hunter was a very versatile author, writing papers (chiefly 

 published in the Asiatic researches) on a variety of subjects. 

 Besides the account of Pegu, he published a number of papers 

 on Botanical and Astronomical subjects, an essay on the 

 diseases of Lascars on long voyages, and a Hindustani-English 

 dictionary. He seems to have visited Penang in 1802 or early 

 in 1803 when he wrote this manuscript which has not hither- 

 to been published, and about the same time he must have 

 written his account of Gambier cultivation, which was publish- 

 ed in the Transactions of the Linnean Society IX p. 218 and 

 read in England in 1807. 



Jour. Straits Branch R A. Soc, No. 53, 1909- 



H 



