William Griffith was a botanist and surgeon who, as a member of the East India Company, undertook extensive travels in India, Burma (now Myanmar), Bhutan and Afghanistan from 1832. While on these expeditions, Griffith made detailed observations of the natural history of the region but was unable to publish any of his findings before his death from a liver disorder at Malacca in 1845. However, Griffith’s manuscripts were acquired by John McClelland, with whom he had travelled to northeast India to study the cultivation of tea, and were published with the assistance of the Calcutta Journal of Natural History.