PIDDINGTON, HENRY, long coroner in Cal cutta, was a merchant seaman. He published various scientific papers on Economic Geology, and afterwards Researches on the Law of Storms, the latter requiring an amount of patience and industry which can only be correctly estimated and appreciated by those engaged in pursuits of a similar nature. He published 24 Memoirs of Cyclones that had occurred between 1780 and 1851; and issued also The. Sailor's Hornbook of Storms, which has gone through six editions. He showed the circular and progressive character of cyclones, and that north of the equator they circled from right to left, or against the hands of a watch. He contributed notices to the Agricultural and Horticultural Society, on the soils best suited for the cultivation of tobacco, coffee, sugar, cotton, and the tea-plant ; on the manufacture of indigo ; the artificial production of cotton ; on the mode of preparing Manilla hemp ; on the prevention of contagious diseases amongst cattle, and on the disease called Bosonto, which attacks the cattle of Bengal. He also
published, as a part of Prinsep's Useful Tables, a Tabular View of the Generic Characters of Rox burgh's Flora Indica, a work requiring a con siderable amount of labour and care in the com pilation, and effecting a saving of time to the botanical student ; but perhaps the most useful of his labours in this department was his English Index to the Plants of India, published 1832. In 1839 he printed, for private circulation, a treatise on the Scientific Principles of Agriculture con sidered as a branch of Public Education in India (which was published in 1854).