Author Description

A student of Carl Linnaeus, Pehr Osbeck (1723-1805) was a Swedish explorer, naturalist and chaplain. He travelled to Asia in 1750-2 and brought back some six hundred specimens that were included in Linnaeus' Species plantarum (1753). His account of his voyage was published in Swedish in 1757, in German in 1765, and here in English in 1771, edited and translated by Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-98). This two-volume work also includes letters to Linnaeus by another pupil, Olof Torén (1718-53), who also travelled to the East in the early 1750s, as well as a paper on Chinese husbandry by Carl Gustaf Ekeberg (1716-84). Ekeberg made ten trips to China and India between 1742 and 1778, becoming a captain in the Swedish East India Company. He too brought back numerous specimens for Linnaeus. Volume 1 is given over to Osbeck's narrative, while Volume 2 includes a catalogue of animals and plants native to China.