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The Sealy List
Background
History This web site could not have been made without the Sealy List. Robert Sealy (1907-2000)
History of started work at Kew in 1925. His interest in botany saw him transferred to the Herbarium,
Botanic where he became an Assistant Botanist in 1940. He published extensively on specific
Gardens genera and was very closely involved with Curtis's Botanical Magazine , where his accounts
East India accompanying the plates rival those of any other contributor in the journal's history.
Company Sealy was well aware of the scientific importance of the Roxburgh drawings, which at the
Botany in time were scattered throughout Kew's collections. Over a period, Sealy and his assistants
the East gathered all the Roxburgh drawings, listed them, and checked them assiduously against
Kyd and Roxburgh's manuscript and the Flora Indica.
Calcutta
In this massive task - there is no record of how long it took - he acknowledged the help of the British Museum for
Roxburgh’s the facilities they offered; and to the India Office Library, who catalogued the Roxburgh drawings they held.
Life
Roxburgh In the Kew Bulletin No. 2, 1956, Sealy published The Roxburgh Flora Indica Drawings at Kew . After his explanatory
and text, the alphabetical list includes all the species in the Flora Indica of 1832, together with those published
Calcutta    elsewhere, such as in Plants of the Coast of Coromandel. Cryptogams are also included: they were not in the
Roxburgh’s original Flora Indica , but an account of them, based on a Roxburgh manuscript, was published by Griffith in the
Legacy Calcutta Journal of Natural History (4, 463-520) in 1844 and reprinted by C. B. Clarke in the 1874 edition of Flora
Indica.
The
Roxburgh Each species is given its volume and page number in Flora Indica 1832 and the page number in the Clarke 1874
Drawings reprint; together with the Roxburgh manuscript number. Except where indicated, there is a numbered drawing at
The Sealy Kew.
List
Sealy's List is the basis for this web site and contains many of his notes. It must be remembered that the list was
FAQs and compiled and arranged in the best practice and understanding of the day - nearly 50 years ago - so modern botany
Help and taxonomy would arrange matters rather differently.
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