Page IX

In the Supplement of Plants by Linnaeus published in 1781, more than 500 new species are attributed to you alone. The Supplementum Plantarum was edited by Linnaeus the Younger, incorporating many of Thunberg’s discoveries from his travels.

These collected short works make up a volume of no small size, filled with the most recent as well as the most worthy discoveries.

You promised, my Friend! A Flora of Japan, a Flora of the Cape, and a Flora and Fauna of Ceylon and Java—works by which, in addition to your Travelogue, you have provoked the eager desires of the learned world.

Now the Flora of Japan comes forth, worthy of you and of the longing of botanists!

This work contains nearly a thousand species of plants, and among these more than 800 are identified, while the season of the year forbade the identification of the rest.

Posterity will marvel at your industry when it learns that a Physician of the Embassy, within sixteen months and in a territory inaccessible to Europeans, discovered and described more than 20 genera of plants and more than 300 new species. Thunberg traveled to Japan with the Dutch East India Company at a time when foreign travel was strictly restricted to the island of Dejima.

Kaempfer, our predecessor in office, opened the way. original: "Kaempferus, officio noster" referring to Engelbert Kaempfer, who visited Japan in the 1690s. To you alone has it fallen to reach this Corinth. original: "adire Corinthum" – a Latin proverb meaning to achieve a difficult or costly task.

I congratulate all Botanists! I congratulate you on a work so greatly desired by them—a work that will not merely be contemporary with you, but will survive you and, as it deserves, be immortal.

If Botany retains a Name, and with that name the Memory of its cultivators, I know not whether anyone is more worthy than you of such a memory that shall never perish!

The Thunbergia A genus of flowering plants named by Linnaeus the Younger in honor of Thunberg to ensure his name lived on in nature. will therefore stay green after your passing; it will bloom every year, mindful of your love for plants!

There are few private Museums richer than yours, packed as it is with the rarest as well as the most precious treasures of Nature and Art.