2 Biographical Memoir of Dr. Rottler. [No. 11, new series. 



stance, does the name of Dr. Rottler deserve being omitted, as 

 it is from " that illustrious series of Botanists" to whose labours 

 Drs. Hooker and Thompson pay so well deserved a tribute of praise 

 in the Essay Introductory to the Flora Indica, p. 47. Rottler 

 has indeed in one direction perpetuated the labours of his friends 

 and his own : his Tamil Dictionary contains a very extensive list of 

 the vernacular names of South Indian Plants, with the techni- 

 cal names by which they were known attached, not a few of 

 which were of his own choosing : and this list will be found to be 

 of very considerable help to Botanists in identifying the plants 

 prescribed in the earlier writers on Indian Botany ; and it is in 

 many instances more serviceable than the imperfect drawings in 

 some of those writers, which are too apt to mislead. 



Dr. Bottler's name has also some interest attached to it in con- 

 nexion with the Madras Literary Society, which in its earliest days 

 considered it not unworthy to be placed on its list of Honorary 

 Members. Connecting this fact with his services in cause of Indian 

 Literature and Science, a notice of his career will scarcely be out 

 of place in the pages of this Journal. 



The Reverend John Peter Rottler,'"" arrived in India in the year 

 1776, when the last of the earliest group of Danish Missionaries at 

 Tranquebar had passed away from their lobours, after some of them 

 had celebrated a full jubilee in the land of their adoption, t He was 

 then in his 27th year, having been born at Strasburg in June 1749. 

 He commenced his education at an early age at a private School* 

 and when he was in his ninth year he became a pupil of the Stras- 

 burg Gymnasium, or Grammar School. The pious Dr. Lorenz was 

 the master of the School, to whom Rottler's future destiny owed its 

 direction. In 17 G6, when in his seventeenth year, he entered the Uni- 

 versity of Strasburg, where he continued his studies for nine years, 

 his former master at the Gymnasium being at the time among its 

 professors. Dr. Freylinghausen, Director of the Orphan House and 

 Missions at Halle, intimated at this time to Dr. Lorenz the wish 

 of the Society of Denmark to send two new Missionaries to 



* For information relating to the earlier career of Rottler, I am in- 

 debted to the Reverend F, M. N. Schwartz, of the Leipsig Missionary 

 Society. 



•j- Hough's Christianity in India, hi. S30. 



