AN EPITOME OF THE BRITISH INDIAN SPjECIES OF 
IMPATIENS. 
By 7 , D. Hooker. 

FART HI. 
!¥.— Species of the Western (Reeean) Peninsula, from Central 
India to Travancore. 
The collections upon which the following Epitome of the Balsams 
of the* Western Peninsula is founded are amongst the earliest formed 
in our Indian possessions. Of these the first are those of Koenig, a 
Danish physician, who resided in India between 1768 and 1775. 
Following him was a body chiefly of missionaries, who formed an 
association* for the purpose of investigating the Flora of the Southern 
districts of the Madras Presidency during the last decades of the 
1 8th century and first of the 19th. Of these, the most active 
members were the three botanists, Kleine, Heyne and Rottler. 
Specimens of most of their discoveries were deposited in the Museum 
of the Honourable East India Company, the duplicates of which 
were distributed by Dr. Wallich, and are included in his numerical 
list of dried specimens in the East India Company's Museum (1828 
et seq.y^ But by far the greatest explorer and exponent of Penin- 
sular Indian Botany was Dr. R, Wight, who, arriving in India in 1819, 
continued his labours as collector, describer and illustrator of the 
Madras Flora till his return to England in 1853. The greater number 
of the Balsams here enumerated were known to, and about half of 
these figured for the first time by him. Wight was succeeded worthily 
by Colonel Beddome, who discovered, chiefly in Travancore, and 
published with figures about a dozen species of fmpatigns unknown to 
his predecessors. In this elaboration of the Peninsular Balsam^ I 
have to record my obligation to Mr. Thurston for the loan of the 
species contained 4 n the Herbarium of the Madras Museum, forwarded 
to me by its Curator C. A. Barber, Esq., M.A., F.L.S., Government 
• For details respecting the early botanical coUecttons in the Peninsula, sec 
Preface, p. xi, of Wight and Arnott's “ Prodromus Florae Peninsulae Indise 
Orien tails **. 
C 
