Bergius, Peter Jonas

, a physician and professor of natural history at Stockholm, and a member of the academy of sciences of that city, died in 1791. He wrote many works of considerable reputation. Having received from Grubb, the director of the Swedish India company, an herbal of plants collected at the Cape of Good Hope, he drew up a description of them, under the title of “Descriptiones plantarum ex Capite Boinc Spei,” Stockholm, 1767, 8vo, but generally quoted by the shorter title of “Flora Capensis.” Bergius discovered several plants in that colony, which had escaped the knowledge of preceding | botanists, and established several genera, one of which he dedicated to Grubb, but this title was not generally adopted. He also published various memoirs on plants in the 'transactions of the societies of which he was a member, and, without ever travelling out of Sweden, found means to acquire a very accurate knowledge of the most rare exotics, and in compliment to his skill Linnæus consecrated to him a new genus by the name of Bergia. He wrote a vegetable “Materia medica,” under the title of “Materia medica e regno vegetabili, sistens simplicia officinalia pariter atque culinaria,” Stockholm, 1778, 8vo; 1782, 2 vols. 8vo and in the Swedish, a treatise on fruit trees, 1780, and a historical work on the city of Stockholm in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. ¹