44 
EARLY EUROPEAN RESEARCHES 
him £4000 for his collections of specimens. As the Sloanian 
collection subsequently gave origin to the British Museum 
(Hanbury’s Science pap. 384) Petiver’s specimens may also be 
stored there. 
In a paper published in the XXIII. vol. of the Philosophi¬ 
cal Transactions (1703) Petiver describes about 70 Chinese 
plants supplied principally by Cunningham. But previously 
he had published in his Muse\um (1692-1703) short charac¬ 
teristics of 1000 exotic plants, amongst which we find scattered 
about 100 from China, the greatest part of them not mentioned 
in the Philosoph. Trans. Besides this he issued his Gazophy- 
lacii Naturae Decades decern, 1702-1709, short descriptions and 
engravings of 100 exotic plants, about 20 of which were 
selected from Cunningham’s Chin, collection. 
It appears from Cunningham’s letters and from Petiver’s 
quotations that the latter had also received from C. a collection 
of Chinese drawings representing Chinese plants. Petiver 
frequently speaks of “ Herbarium nostrum sinense pictum.” 
Leonard Plukenet, born 1642+1705, alearned English botanist, 
educated at Oxford. He was in war with Sloane and Petiver. 
Plukenet has published many botanical works and described 
and depicted a great number of new plants especially from 
America, the East Indies and China. Almost all Chinese 
plants he mentions had been handed to him by Cunningham, 
and it seems that the latter hhd entrusted the greatest part of 
his herbarium to Plukenet, who described about 400 Chinese 
specimens in his Amaltheum hotanicum sen Stirpium Indicarum 
alterum copiae cornu 1705, intermixed with American and 
Indian plants. Nearly one half of the Chinese plants Plukenet 
faithfully figured in vol. Ill of his Phytographia*. These 
figures are small and often much reduced from the natural 
sige, but are generally very characteristic. 
In 1779 Dr. P. D. Gieseke added an Index Linneanus in 
Plukenetii opera botanica, in which he ascertained a great 
number of the plants there described and figured, but with 
respect to the Chinese specimens in the Phytographia he has 
only in a few cases been able to identify them. 
Perhaps the botanist Ray (1628-1705.) disposed also of 
a part of Cunningham’s plants. In his JE listoria plantar urn, in 
the 3d vol. (1704) he describes some of them. It may be 
* The 3rd yol. of Plukenetii Phytographia bears the date 1692. But 
this is evidently an error for each engraving in it is referred to the text 
in the Amaltheum, published 1705. PL published also an Almagestum 
Botanicum, 1696, in which a few Chinese plants appear. 
