MADRAS JOURNAL 



0 F 



LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 



No. U.-NEW SEKIES. 



May, 1861. 



Biographical Memoir of Dr. Rattler. By the Revd. T. Foulkes, 

 Church Missionary Society, Madras. 



To few of the present generation is it known how much Indian 

 Natural Science owes to a little group of foreign Missionaries who 

 worked together at Tranquebar, towards the close of the last cen- 

 tury.. Distributing its different branches amongst themselves, they 

 proceeded to make themselves acquainted with a field hitherto 

 unexplored. On the Western Coast a great, though unscientific 

 work had already been done by Van Rheede, in the end of the 

 seventeenth century. In the Northern parts of the Peninsula also, 

 as well as in Bengal, Dr. Roxburgh was, at the time when Konig, 

 and Klein, and Heyne, and John, and Bottler were at work at 

 Tranquebar, busily employed upon his Coromandel Plants, and his 

 Flora Indica : and it is probably not too much to say that those 

 splendid writers owe not a little to the aid afforded towards their 

 compilation by the Tranquebar Missionary naturalists. 



The results of the labours of these indefatigable men are not 

 represented by any separate publication ; and hence notwith- 

 standing their large contributions to more than one work now 

 advanced into standard work of reference on Indian Botany, 

 the labours are too nearly being forgotten. How little, for in- 



