ROYLE, JOHN FORBES, M.D., F.R.S., of the Bengal Medical Service. Author of the Geo graphical Description of the Flora of India, Rep. Brit. Ass., 1846, part iii. p. 74 ; Illustrations of the Botany, etc., of the Himalayan Mountains, 1839 ; Productive Resources of India, Lond. 1840 ; on the Culture of Cotton in India, Lond. 1852, 1 vol. 8vo ; on the Fibrous Plants of India. In 1820 Dr. Royle commenced his Indian career, and died at Acton, 2d January 1858. Shortly after his appointment as Assistant-Surgeon on the Bengal Establishment, he was placed in charge of the Botanic Garden at Saharunpur, where he remained for nearly nine years. On his return to England in 1832 or 1833, he commenced the publication of his work on the Betany of the Himalayan Mountains, which contains also au accumulation of valuable information respecting the economical, medicinal, and other vegetable products of India. In 1838 or 1839, 110 WM appointed Botanical Adviser to the E. I. Company, after which ho published a work on the•Productive Resources of India, which contains a great amount of useful information culled from various sources, combined with his own experience and research ; and in 1851, a work on the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India and elsewhere.
After the breaking out of the Rusaian war of 1853, Dr. Royle, in 1855, wrote on Fibrous Plants of India fitted for Cordage, Clothing, and Paper.
In addition to these,' he published on tho Anti quity of Hindu 3fedieine ; an Essay on Medical Education ; 3fauual of 3fateria Medics and Therapeutics ; besides contributions to Kitto's Cyclopmdia, Holtzapfel's Turning and 3fechanical Manipulation, to the Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851 • on the Hyssop, and on tho Mustard Plant of gcripture ; on the Culture of the China Tea Plant ; and very shortly before hia death, a pamphlet reviewing the measures which have been adopted in India for the improved culture of cotton. The districts investigated by Dr..Roylo and by his collectors were chiefly the Jumno-Gangetic Doab, the upper part of the Gangetic plain, and the mountains of Garhwal, Sirmore, Kanawar, and Kashmir. His Illustrations of the Botany of the Himalayan 'Mountains, in two volumes quarto, with 100 plates, is still the only book, except Dr. Wallich's Tentamen Flora Nepalensis, devoted to the rich flora of the mountains • and it further contains the first attempt to' demonstrate the prominent features of • the geoaraphieal distribution of Northern Indian plang in reference to the elevations and climates they inhabit, and to the botany of sur rounding countries.—Hooker and Thomson's Flor. Indica; Indian Field.