the German Entomological Institute, in the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, the Natural History Museum in Vienna and the Natural History Museum in London (where they are in the collections of Dr. Thwaites). Nietner subsequently bought an estate in Ramboda (Rambodde) eight miles from Kandawalle in Katoo-kandy. According to Rohan Pethiyagoda, Nietner began to work in 1853 with A. & R. Crowe and Co. in Colombo and around 1857 he bought Fernlands Estate at Pundulu Oya "by his industry and thrifty diligence" along with Staniforth Green, an uncle of the entomologist E. E. Green. When he visited Germany in 1863 he could claim to be an established plantation owner as noted in a newspaper clipping kept by his sister Pauline. He married Julie Burghalter on this visit and returned to Ceylon with his wife. Nietner made several tours in which he explored botany, specifically seeking novel plants of economic value (especially nut bearing trees) suitable for cultivation in Ceylon. He travelled to the Sunda Islands, Mauritius (Reunion/Bourbon), and across India. He explored the Himalayas in January 1853 starting from Bengal and travelling through Delhi, Kashmir, followed by visits Nainital and Almora. He also traversed southern India on foot, carriage and palanquin, from the Western Ghats to the Coromandel coast. He continued making collections and sending them to his father who handled their sale to various collectors. The Nietners set out to return to Germany in 1874 but John died en route on February 21 of dysentery and is buried in the General Cemetery (Kanatta), in Colombo. His widow returned to the family home at Potsdam and the collections that she held were probably destroyed in the First World War. His death was recorded by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, of which he was a corresponding member from 1857, only in 1887. Ernst Haeckel received a copy of G.H.K. Thwaites' Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniae (1864) from Nietner’s widow in 1883 prior to setting sail for Ceylon. Among the species named after Nietner are the dragonfly Heliogomphus nietneri, the wasp Microterys nietneri, the ants Anochetus nietneri, Pheidole nietneri, the strepsipteran Myrmecolax nietneri, the butterfly Cethosia nietneri; and the bryophytes Lejeunea nietneri, Acroporium nietnerianum and Radula nietneri. The red-breasted flycatcher (Ficedula parva) was first found wintering in Ceylon by Nietner and it was described by Cabanis as Muscicapa hyperythra and referred to as Nietner's robin flycatcher. Works Many of Nietner's early botanical, gardening,