Noltie's monograph deals with Robert Wight, a Scottish surgeon working for the East India Company. Wight was the most prolific taxonomist working in South India in the first half of the nineteenth century. Together with George Walker Arnott, his collaborator in Scotland, he described 1261 new species and 107 new genera. This book documents their names and the type specimens in the herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on which they are based.
Also included are a chronology of Wight's life, a bibliography of his publications and gazetteer of his collecting localities, with chapters on his botanical collaborators and a listing of 256 species named to commemorate his monumental achievement.