o<\ MONTHLY. Po 
Vol. XIX. 
COLOMBO, APRIL 2nd, 1900. 
No. 10. 
A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF 
INDIAN BOTANY." 
BY SIR GEORGE KING, K.C.I.E. LL.D. M.B. F.R.S. 
HE earliest reference in litera- 
ture to Indian plants are, of 
course, those which occur in 
the Sanskrit classics. These 
are, however, for the most part, 
va£;ue and obscure. The inter- 
est which these references have 
great as it may be, is not scien- 
tific, and they may therefore be omitted from consider- 
ation on the present occasion. The Portuguese, who 
were the first Europeans to appear in India as conquer- 
ors and settlers, did practically nothing in the way of 
describing the plants ot their Eastern possessions. 
And the flcst contribution to the knowledge' of the 
Botany of what is now British India was made by 
the Dutch in the shape of the ' Hortus Malabaricus,' 
which was undertaken at the instance of Van Rheede, 
governor of the territory of Malabar, which during 
the latter half of the seventeenth century had become 
a possession of Holland. This book, which is in twelve 
folio volumes and is illustrated by 794 plates, was 
published at Amsterdam between the years 1686 and 
1703, under the editorship of the distinguished ]5ota- 
nist Commelyn. Van Rheede was himself only a 
Botanical amateur, but he had a great love of plants 
and moat enlightened ideas as to the value ot a 
correct and scientific knowledge of them. The ' Hor- 
tus Malabaricus ' was based on specimens collected 
by Brahmins, on drawings of many of the species 
made by Mathseus, a Carmelite missionary at Cochin, 
and on descriptions originally drawn up in the 
Tcrnacular language ot Malabar, which were after- 
wards translated into Portuguese by Corneiro, a Por- 
* From the Report of the Sixty-ninth Meeting of 
the British Association for the Advancement of 
Scieaoo hfeld at Dover in September, 1699. 
tuguese official in Cochin, and from that language 
finally done into Latin by Van Douet. The whole 
ot these operations were carried ou under the general 
superintendence of Casearius, a missionary at Cochin. 
Of this most interesting work the plates are the best 
part ; in fact, some of these are so good that there 
is no difiioulty in identifying them with the species 
which they are intended to represent. The next im- 
portant contribution to the Botanical literature of 
Tropical Asia deals rather with the plants of Dutch 
than of British India. It was the work ot George 
Everhard Rumph (a native ot Hanover), a physician 
and merchant, who for some time was Dutch consul 
at Amboina, The materials for this book were col- 
lected mainly by Ramphius himself, and the Latin 
descriptions and the drawings (of which there are 
over one thousand) were his own work. The book 
was completed in 1690, but it remained unpublished 
during the author's lifetime. Rnmph died at Amboina 
in 1706, and his manuscript, after lying for thirty 
years in the hands of the Dutch East India Com- 
pany, was rescued from oblivion by Professor John 
Burman, ot Amsterdam (commonly known as the 
elder Burman), and was published under the title of 
' Herbarium Amboinense,' in seven folio volumes, be- 
tween the years 1741 and 1755. The illustrations of 
this work cover over a thousand species, but they 
are printed on 696 plates. These illustrations are 
as much interior to those of Van Rheede'a book aa 
the descriptions are superior to those of the latter. 
The works of Plukenet, published in Loudon between 
i696 and 1705, in quarto, contain figures of a number 
of Indian plants which, although small in size, are 
generally good portraits, and therefore deserve roen- 
tion in an enumeration of botanical books connected 
with British India. An acoouut of the plants of 
Ceylon, under the name ' Thesaurus Zeylanicus,' was 
published in 1737 by John Burman (the elder Bruman), 
and in this work many of the plants which are 
common to that island and to Peninsular India are 
