J.A. Ludwig Preiss, German naturalist, graduated as Doctor of Philosophy (Phil Dr). His thesis dealt with bile and was published as Dissertatio inauguralis medico-practica, sistens tractatum de aqua bilinensi (Prague, 1841, 70 pp). In 1843 he was a private scholar in Hamburg and became a member of the Academia Caesarea Leopoldino-Carolina Naturae Curiosorum at Halle. He settled at Herzberg am Harz in 1844.
From 1838 to 1842 Preiss undertook a journey to Australia and the Middle East to collect plants and other natural history specimens. He touched at the Cape in October 1838 and collected in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, including Table Mountain and the Cape Flats, and as far north as the Groot Winterhoekberge, north of Tulbagh.
He arrived in Australia in December 1838 and remained until January 1842. During his travels he collected some 200 000 plants (including duplicates), 200 species of insects, 181 species of birds, and 60 to 80 different reptiles, almost all in Australia. The plants he collected in Western Australia (including some islands near Perth) were described by Johann G.C. Lehmann, with several collaborators, in Plantae Preissianae... (2 vols, Hamburg, 1844-1848). The authors described many species as new, and the work was an important contribution to the botany of Western Australia. One of the collaborators was Otto W. Sonder*, who appears to have had a nearly complete set of Preiss's plants. Part of Sonder's herbarium, including most of the Cape plants, was purchased by the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, Stockholm; another part went to the Victoria National Herbarium, Melbourne. The species Eucalyptus preissiana and other Australian plants were named after Preiss. His large collection of zoological specimens did not receive the attention it deserved and later collectors received the credit for discovering species that he almost certainly collected. His detailed notes on the specimens do not appear to have survived.
