KOENIG, JOHN GERARD, a native of Cour land and pupil of Linnaeus. He travelled in Ice land in the year 1765, and arrived at Tranquebar, in India, in the end of 1768 or beginning of 1769. He was physician to the Tranquebar mission in the Karnatic ; but his enthusiasm, defiance of bodily fatigue, spare meals, the scorching climate, and his simplicity of manners and benevolence, soon made him known to and beloved by the Dutch, French, and British with whom be met. He became naturalist to the nawab Muhammad Ali, and while at Madras made the acquaintance of Dr. James Anderson. In 1778, the Government of Madras granted him a salary to enable him to carry on his researches, and with this aid he visited the Straits of Malacca and Siam towards the end of 1779, and made known the occurrence there of tin ore. His salary was again increased in 1780, and he then visited Ceylon. He travelled
along the coast to Calcutta, from which he was returning in 1785, when he was attacked with diarrhcea or dysentery, and died on 26th June. He bequeathed all his plants to Sir Joseph Banks. His example and instructions diffused a similar taste among his companions, and hence originated the botanical labours of the society of ' United Brothers.' But although it may be said that scientific botany took its rise in India from Koenig, the flora of the East Indies had not been entirely neglected by European botanists prior to that period, as the works of Rheede, Rumphius, Plukenet, the two Burmanns, and finally a large and well-preserved yet almost unknown collection of Indian plants in the Oxford herbarium, formed in the early part of the eighteenth century, amply testify.