INTRODUCTION. 
I nave had a double object in publishing the present Work: one is to pay such a tribute to the memory of 
my friend, the late Mr. Cathcart, as should ensure the association of his name with the progress of Indian 
Botany ; the other, to record the services he has rendered to that science by having caused a magnificent 
series of coloured drawings of Himalayan plants to be made in a previously almost unknown part of 
that; mountain-range, and which since his death has been presented, through me, to the Royal Gardens of 
Kew, by his sister, Miss Cathcart, of Alloway. 
These objects, it appeared to myself and to Mr. Cathcart’s friends, would be best attained by publishing 
a limited series of the drawings, in such a form as should convey to the patrons of Botany and Horticulture 
in this country and in India some idea of the beauty and interest of that Flora to whose illustration Mr, 
Cathcart so zealously and liberally devoted his time and means. In carrying out these views, I have been 
so fortunate as to secure the services of Mr. Fitch, who has redrawn all the Plates, availing himself of my 
preserved specimens and analyses, and, by his own unrivalled skill in seizing the natural characters of plants, 
has corrected the stiffness and want of botanical knowledge displayed by the native artists who executed 
most of the originals. 
I have endeavoured to choose such subjects as combine scientific interest with remarkable beauty in 
form or colour, or some other qualification that would render them eminently worthy of cultivation in Eng- 
land, and can only regret that I am obliged to limit myself to so small a selection; the drawings in question, 
of which there are nearly one thousand, affording ample materials for a large series of equal beauty and 
novelty with those now published. To make this volume a better illustration of a mountain Fora, I have 
added a few figures of alpine plants which were found at greater elevations than Mr. Cathcart was enabled 
to visit, and these are reproduced by Mr. Fitch from drawings of my own. 
Mr. Cathcart was an ardent amateur, a man of a highly cultivated mind; naturally of a retiring 
disposition, he loved science for its own sake ; and the hope that the fruits of his labours would benefit others 
as much as the prosecution of them gratified his tastes for what was curious and beautiful in nature, was the 
mainspring of his actions. His zeal was singularly unobtrusive, so that few even of the cultivators of science 
in India were aware of the extent of his exertions: his pursuits were, however, well known to a wide circle 
