New Delhi, Jan. 25 -- "These are palimpsests that combine art and science," says taxonomist, curator and botanical historian Henry J. Noltie by way of explaining the paintings we are looking at. Created in the 18th and 19th centuries by Indian artists, these works were meant to record the abundance of flora and fauna that the subcontinent held, mostly at the behest of the officers at the East India Company (EIC) and, later, by British authorities after the EIC was dissolved. The taxonomic principle is so strongly at work that some of the paintings remain only partially coloured, just enough for a botanist to glean a fuller picture from the faint outlines.

We are meeting on a particularly bleak morning in Delhi at his publisher's office t...