John Forbes, a distinguished botanist, was born in the year 1799, and was educated for the medical profession at London under Dr Anthony Todd Thomson. Entering the service of the East India Company, he applied himself to the study of the botany of Hindustan. For this object the superintendence of the botanical gardens at Calcutta afforded him many facilities. The greatest diligence was employed in making a collection of plants. Their medicinal properties especially were investigated. Other natural products were likewise examined by his all-observant eye. The result of all these labours were published on his return to England in a work entitled Illustrations of the Botany and other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalaya Mountains. The rest of Dr Royle's life after his settlement in London was characterised by great and multifarious activity. He discharged till 1856 the professorship of materia medica in King's College. A Manual of Materia Medica and other separate works were published by him. Several papers from his pen were contributed to the Penny Cyclopaedia and to Kitto's Dictionary of the Bible. Above all, it was his great aim to bring the natural history of Hindustan before the public. He published a work On the Productive Resources of India in 1840, and another On the Fibrous Plants of India in 1855. He read before the British Association papers On the Cultivation of Cotton, On the Cultivation of Tea in the East Indies, and on other kindred subjects. He also took an active part in arranging the Indian department in the Great Exhibition of 1851. Dr Royle, at the time of his death, on January 2, 1858, was a fellow of the Royal Linnaean and Geological societies.