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Robert Wight

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Robert Wight
Born
Robert Wight

(1796-07-06)6 July 1796
Died26 May 1872(1872-05-26)(aged 75)
Drosera burmanniby the artist Rungiah from "Spicilegium Neilgherrense"

Robert WightMDFRSFLS(6 July 1796 – 26 May 1872) was a Scottish surgeon in theEast India Company,whose professional career was spent entirely in southern India, where his greatest achievements were in botany – as an economic botanist and leading taxonomist in south India. He contributed to the introduction ofAmerican cotton.As a taxonomist he described 110 new genera and 1267 new species of flowering plants. He employed Indian botanical artists to illustrate many plants collected by himself and Indian collectors he trained. Some of these illustrations were published byWilliam Hookerin Britain, but from 1838 he published a series of illustrated works in Madras including the uncoloured, six-volumeIcones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis(1838–53) and two hand-coloured, two-volume works, theIllustrations of Indian Botany(1838–50) andSpicilegium Neilgherrense(1845–51). By the time he retired from India in 1853 he had published 2464 illustrations of Indian plants.The standardauthor abbreviationWightis used to indicate this person as the author whencitingabotanical name.[1]

Life and work[edit]

Early life[edit]

Wight was the son of asolicitor(Writer to the Signet) in Edinburgh who came from a line of East Lothian tenant farmers. He was born at Milton, East Lothian, the ninth of twelve siblings.[2]He was educated at home until the age of eleven after which he studied at the Royal High School in Edinburgh. He obtained a surgeon's diploma in 1816 from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh. He trained at Edinburgh University, studying botany underDaniel Rutherfordin 1816, and graduating MD in 1818.[3]It has been claimed that he worked as a ship's surgeon for two years and went on a few voyages, including one to theUSA[4]but this has been questioned.[5][6]

Early work in India[edit]

In 1819 Wight went to India as an Assistant Surgeon in the service of the East India Company, serving initially with the 21st (afterwards 42nd, which was later commanded by his brother Colonel James Wight) Madras Native Infantry. His devotion to botany was clear from the start and his earliest collections were made aroundSamalkota,Rajahmundryand Masulipatam in the Northern Circars in the present-day state of Andhra Pradesh. After periods in the Public Cattle Depot at Mysore (Seringapatam) and with the 33rd Madras Native Infantry he was, in January 1826, appointed to succeed Dr James Shuter in the post of Madras Naturalist.[6]In 1828 the Governor of Madras,Stephen Rumbold Lushington,scrapped the Naturalist's post,[7]and its collections (including Wight's own, and earlier ones ofPatrick Russelland the Tranquebar Missionaries) were sent to the Company headquarters in London. Wight was redeployed to regimental duties as garrison surgeon atNagapattinam.[3]From here, in 1828, he began a productive correspondence withWilliam Hooker,Professor of Botany at Glasgow University, sending him plant specimens and drawings by his Indian artist Rungiah.[4]Earlier collections from aroundMadrasup toVelloreand fromSamalkotaandRajahmundry,sent to ProfessorRobert Grahamin Edinburgh had been unacknowledged and, though said to have been lost at sea, are probably the Andhra Pradesh specimens which are in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.[8]

Return to Scotland[edit]

Wight in 1855 from a Maull & Polyblank albumen print (from theNPG)

In 1831, shortly after having been promoted to Surgeon, Wight took a three-year leave to Britain ‘on private affairs’. He took with him to London 100,000 plant specimens representing 3000-4000 species, and weighing 2 tons.[4]Nathaniel Wallichwas then in London curating the great East India Company herbarium, which contained the Madras Naturalists' collection. Wight's additions came too late and he had to identify, curate and distribute the collection on his own but Wight was fortunate to enlist the help of his old school and university friendGeorge Arnott Walker-Arnott,who had given up a legal career and was working as a free-lance botanist in Scotland. During this leave, Wight spent much time in Scotland where the two men worked on the collections and distributed up to 20 sets of duplicates to specialists in Britain, Europe, America and Russia. Wight & Arnott embarked on three joint publications: a Catalogue of the herbarium specimens (reproduced lithographically as was done by Wallich), a Peninsular Flora arranged according to the natural system, and a volume of monographs, mainly by other authors, of three significant plant families. Before Wight's return to India in 1834 the first two parts of the herbarium catalogue (with species numbers 1–1892), the first volume of the outstandingProdromus Florae Peninsulae Indiae Orientalis(up to the familyDipsacaceaeof theCandollean system) had been published. Shortly thereafter came theContributions to the Flora of Indiaunder Wight's name, containing accounts of the familiesAsclepiadaceae(by himself and Arnott),Cyperaceae(byChristian Nees von Esenbeck) andCompositae(byAugustin Pyramus de Candolle). Nees published Wight'sAcanthaceaein Wallich'sPlantae Asiaticae Rariores,but the only other botanists to intensively examine his collections wereGeorge Bentham,who published Wight'sLabiataeandScrophulariaceaeandJohn Lindleywho described some of his orchids.[9]

Return to India[edit]

Illustration ofCalotropispublished in 1835

Wight returned to India in 1834 as a full surgeon in the 33rd Regiment of Native Infantry at Bellary. During this period he began working on the medicinal plants of India, maintaining native botanical artists and publishing brief notes in theMadras Journal of Literature and Scienceand later became the editor for the botany section of that journal.[10]The papers included one on the medicinal plant ‘mudar’ (Calotropis procera)[11]and on the flora ofCourtallam.[12]

Economic botany[edit]

The recognition of Wight's botanical skills led in 1836 to his transfer to the Madras Revenue Department. The transfer was based on references from Hooker and Robert Brown, the Governor SirFrederick Adamadvised by J.G. Malcolmson, and Wight was to report on agriculture and cotton. Over the next six years this work involved species such as tea, sugar cane,sennaand, increasingly, cotton. In 1836 he visited Ceylon for six weeks, and he reported on the resources of upland areas including thePalni Hills.In 1841 he purchased a house in Ootacamund, which was to remain the base for his growing family until 1847. In 1842 he was appointed Superintendent of American Cotton Plantations, a post in Coimbatore that he held until his retirement in 1853.[6]This was a major project of the Madras Government with a spending of almost 500,000 Rupees (about £2.5 million in today's terms) to induce Indian tenant farmers (ryots) to grow introduced long-staple American Cotton and to process it using thesaw gin,so that it could be exported for spinning and weaving in Manchester. The cotton was grown by ryots on farms that covered a range of soils and climatic regimes from Salem in the north toCourtallamin the south. Wight showed that the new cottons could be grown, though this was difficult without irrigation. The experiment was, however, deemed a failure, though largely due to economic reasons,[13][14]and long-staple cottons did not supersede indigenous diploid varieties until the early 20th century.

Wight was an early member of the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society, whose garden, next to theCathedral in Madras,acted as the city's botanical garden. He acted as the Society's secretary at various times between 1839 and 1841, and edited a volume of itsProceedingsin 1842. In India Wight published numerous letters and short papers in theMadras Journal of Literature and Science(1834–40), in the various publications of the Calcutta-based Agricultural and Society of India (1838–54) and theCalcutta Journal of Natural History(1845–6).[15]

Lithography and publications[edit]

Advertisement for books (1846)

Wight's lasting achievement was the series of illustrated publications on Indian botany. Learning fromRoxburgh,who had used expensive engravings, Wight decided to use cheaper lithographic techniques. He began to employ the artist Rungiah (Rungia), who was employed from possibly as early as 1826 to around 1845, and thereafter employed Govindoo. Unlike other British workers of the time, he gave credit to his artists, printing their names on all his publications of their drawings. He named a genus of orchid,Govindooia(nowTropidia), after Govindoo, but could not do so for Rungiah, as a genusRungiaalready existed, described byNathaniel Wallichfor an Indian plant named after the German chemistFriedlieb Ferdinand Runge(1794-1867). Wights illustrated publications included the uncoloured, six-volumeIcones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis(1838–53) and two hand-coloured, two-volume works, theIllustrations of Indian Botany(1838–50) andSpicilegium Neilgherrense(1845–51).[3][16][17][18]

Return to England and collections[edit]

Wight left India after retiring from service in March 1853. He returned to England with poor health and difficulty in hearing. He returned to England and bought the 66-acre estate of Grazeley Lodge near Reading. Although his intention had been to continue with taxonomic research, he got diverted into small-scale agriculture, and published very little thereafter. Eight short articles on cotton cultivation were published in theGardeners' Chroniclein 1861 and as a substantial pamphlet in 1862. In 1865 Wight was a member of the committee that helpedEdward John Waringedit thePharmacopoeia of India(published in 1868) and in 1866 he read a paper onOn the Phenomenon of Vegetation in the Indian Spring[19]to the International Botanical Congress in London.[20]

Visiting botanists were welcomed to use his herbarium, but a new generation of botanists had become active in India, includingJoseph HookerandThomas Thomson.He donated his vast collection of duplicates to theKew herbarium,which included 3108 species of higher plants and 94 of ferns, distributed in 1869/70 in 20 sets to herbaria in Europe, Russia, North America, South Africa, Australia and, for the first time, to two South Asian herbaria (Calcutta andPeradeniya). In October 1871, shortly before his death Wight gave his best specimens to Kew, which included the types of the species described in his publications.[20]

Personal life[edit]

Wight married Rosa Harriet(te), the third daughter of a senior Madras surgeon, Lacey Gray Ford inSt George's Cathedral, Madras,on 17 January 1838. The couple had four sons and a daughter who survived into adulthood, and two daughters who died in infancy. Wight died on 26 May 1872 at Grazeley Lodge and was buried in the parish church of Grazeley where he had long been a churchwarden.[6][21]Unlike some of his other medical contemporaries Wight was not successful financially, he left moveable estate worth less than £2000 (about £200,000 in today's terms),[22]and Grazeley had to be sold immediately after his death. Descendants of the daughter of his eldest son James survive although they do not bear his surname.

Recognition and legacy[edit]

Wight was elected aFellow of the Linnaean Societyin 1832 and, in the same year, as a member of the oldest scientific society in Europe, theAcademia Caesarea Leopoldina-Carolinae Naturae Curiosorum.After his return to Britain, in 1855, he was elected a Fellow of Royal Society of London. In India he was a member of the Agri-Horticultural Societies of Madras and India. He corresponded with the leading botanists of his time including George Arnott Walker-Arnott,Sir WilliamHooker,Joseph Hooker, WilliamGriffith,NathanielWallich,George Bentham,Christian GottfriedNeesvon Esenbeck, John ForbesRoyle,JohnLindley,Carl Philipp vonMartius,John Stevens Henslow,WilliamMunroand RobertBrown.[4][6]

Eponymy[edit]

In recognition of his contribution to Botany, Wight is one of the most highly commemorated of all Indian botanists. Wight named many plants after his botanical collaborators in India and Europe. In 1830 Wallich dedicated the genusWightiato him and 256 species have been dedicated to him though 19 of these wereillegitimatenomenclaturally, and the number is far greater when other combinations made from the basionyms are considered. In addition to flowering plants, this number includes 6 ferns, 3 bryophytes, 2 red algae and one each of clubmoss, brown alga, lichen and basidiomycete.[23]A sample of species named after Wight include:

A plate by Rungiah

Variants include Wt. and R.W. Some of his early contributions were mistakenly published by William Hooker with his name as "Richard Wight".[4]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^International Plant Names Index.Wight.
  2. ^Noltie (2007):14.
  3. ^abcNoltie (2005a)
  4. ^abcdeBasak (1981).
  5. ^Noltie (2005):82.
  6. ^abcde"Obituary notices".Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London:xliv–xlvii. 1873.
  7. ^Royle. J. Forbes (1857)."Observations on provincial exhibition and the improvements of the resources of the several districts of the Madras Presidency".The Madras Journal of Literature and Science.18:64–79.
  8. ^Noltie (2005):8.
  9. ^Noltie (2005):27-67.
  10. ^Wight, Robert (1835)."Observations on Mudar (Calotropis procera), with some remarks on the medical properties of the natural order Asclepiadeae".Madras Journal of Literature and Science.2:70–85.
  11. ^Wight, R. (1835)."Observations on Mudar (Calotropis procera), with some remarks on the medical properties of the natural order Asclepiadeae".Madras Journal of Literature and Science.2:70–86.
  12. ^Wight, R. (1835)."Observations on the flora of Courtallum".Madras Journal of Literature and Science.2:380–391.
  13. ^Wheeler, J. Talboys (1862).Hand-book to the cotton cultivation in the Madras Presidency.Madras: J. Higginbotham. pp. 45–48.
  14. ^Royle, J. Forbes (1851).On the culture and commerce of cotton in India, and elsewhere.London: Smith, Elder, & Co. pp. 472–543.
  15. ^See bibliography in Noltie (2005):27-43.
  16. ^Wight, Robert (1853).Icones plantarum Indiae orientalis; or, Figures of Indian plants By Robert Wight.Vol. Item notes: v.6 (Original from Harvard University, Digitized 22 May 2007 ed.). Madras: P.R. Hunt American Mission Press.
  17. ^Noltie, H. J. (1999) Indian botanical drawings 1793-1868 from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Edinburgh.
  18. ^See book 2 of Noltie (2007).
  19. ^Wight, Robert (1866)."On the phenomena of vegetation in the Indian spring".Gardeners' Chronicle.1866:517.
  20. ^abNoltie(2005):3-24.
  21. ^Anon. (1838). "Births, Marriages and Deaths".The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany.26:112.
  22. ^Desmond, Ray. "Wight, Robert".Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(online ed.). Oxford University Press.doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/29370.(Subscription orUK public library membershiprequired.)
  23. ^For a complete list see Noltie(2005):476-516.

Cited references[edit]

Other sources[edit]

  • Curtis' Botanical Magazine. 1931.Dedications and Portraits 1827-1927.Compiled by Earnest Nelmes and Wm. Cuthbertson. London: Bernard Quaritch Ltd.
  • Cleghorn, H.F.C. (1873). "Obituary notice of Dr Robert Wight, F.R.S.".Transactions of the Botanical Society.11:363–388.
  • "'The Late Dr. Robert Wight, FRS ".Gardener's Chronicle.50(22): 731–732. 1872.
  • Gray, Asa. 1873.Scientific Intelligence.American Journal of Science and Arts 5, ser. 3. p. 395.
  • King, Sir George.1899.The Early History of Indian botany.Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. pp. 904–919.

External links[edit]

Preceded by Naturalist and Botanist to the H.E.I.C. atMadras
1826-1828 		Succeeded by
Position abolished.
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