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 in propelling boats. He received his medical education at the university of Edinburgh, and on 10 Dec. 1810 entered the royal navy as an assistant-surgeon, and in that capacity saw service on the shores of Spain, where the war was then raging. From August 1812 until promoted to the rank of surgeon (28 Jan. 1814) he was employed on board the Marlborough, 74, on the coast of North America. In 1816 he served in the Confiance, 32, on Lake Erie, where he became the close friend of the traveller, Hugh Clapperton [q. v.] After 1817 he made four voyages to New South Wales as surgeon-superintendent of convict ships, in which upwards of six hundred criminals were transported to that colony without the loss of a single life. The results of his observations during this period were embodied in his ‘Two Years in New South Wales,’ 1827, 2 vols., which was favourably noticed in the ‘Quarterly Review’ for January 1828, pp. 1–32. To the profits arising from this book he added his early savings while in the navy, and expended them in an attempt to open up a large tract of land in Australia, which he then fondly regarded as his adopted country. But the locality was perhaps badly chosen, the seasons were certainly unpropitious, and he soon abandoned the struggle, as far as his own personal superintendence was concerned. His well-earned reputation at the admiralty, however, speedily procured him employment, and on 22 Oct. 1830 he was appointed to the Tyne, 28, served on the South American station until January 1834, and had opportunities of observing the effects of tropical climates on European constitutions. He joined the Asia, 84, in 1836, and, proceeding to the Mediterranean, was present at the blockade of Alexandria in 1840. He left the sea in May 1841, and was placed on the list of medical officers unfit for further service in 1850. In addition to the work above mentioned he wrote two others: ‘On the Motions of the Earth, and on the Conception, Growth, and Decay of Man and Causes of his Diseases as referable to Galvanic Action,’ 1834; and ‘Hints for Australian Emigrants, with descriptions of the Water-raising Wheels in Egypt,’ 1841. He contributed an account of a visit to the Falkland Islands to the ‘Athenæum’ and was a frequent writer elsewhere. He was a man of remarkable powers of observation, greatly attached to his brother Allan, and very popular among his friends. He died at Greenwich on 6 March 1864, aged 74.

[Rev. D. Hogg's Life of Allan Cunningham (1875), pp. 12–14, 360–8; Gent. Mag. June 1864, pp. 799–800; O'Byrne's Naval Biog. Dict. (1861 edit.), p. 270.]  CUNNINGHAM, RICHARD (1793–1835), botanist, brother of Allan Cunningham (1791–1839) [q. v.], was born at Wimbledon 12 Feb. 1793. After his school days at Putney, under the same master, John Adams, M.A., at fifteen years of age he, like his elder brother, was employed by the king's gardener, W. T. Aiton, on the ‘Hortus Kewensis.’ Six years later, on the completion of that work and its ‘Epitome,’ he was transferred from Kensington to Kew, where he acted as Aiton's amanuensis for eighteen years. In May 1832 Charles Fraser, colonial botanist and superintendent of the Botanic Garden at Sydney, died, and Cunningham was appointed his successor on the recommendation of Robert Brown, and embarked at Sheerness in August of that year. After eighteen weeks at sea he landed at Sydney 5 Jan. 1833 with a cargo of living plants and vines, the latter specially selected from France and Spain. A short time after H.M.S. Buffalo landed its charge of convicts, and embarked Cunningham to superintend the cutting of Kauri pine in New Zealand; here he found a friendly reception from the natives, whom his brother Allan on a previous visit had conciliated. In March 1834 he returned to the Bay of Islands and reached Australia by the Alligator. The next year he started with an exploring party to investigate the course of the Darling river, under Colonel Mitchell. He was found to have a singular faculty for losing himself in the bush when intent on botany, and on 17 April he was missing when the party encamped. Search was made for him during the next four days; then his track was found, showing that he was leading his horse; then its corpse was discovered, and on 2 May his handkerchief. It seems that on 24 or 25 April, when exhausted by hunger and thirst, he fell in with a party of natives, by whom he was fed; during the night his strange manner, the effect probably of his sufferings, exciting their alarm, he was murdered by them [see article on his brother, ].



CUNNINGHAM, THOMAS MOUNSEY (1776–1834), Scottish poet, second son of John Cunningham and Elizabeth Harley, daughter of a Dumfries merchant, was born at Culfaud, Kirkcudbrightshire, on 25 June 1776. He was an elder brother of Allan Cunningham [q. v.], the biographer of Burns. He received his early education at a dame's school and the village school of Colliston, after which he attended Dumfries Academy,