204 NATURAL HISTORY. 



■wondrous shapes and colours, and gradations of colour, in every wave 

 and cloud, and leaf asid boulder, where the other sees onty trees on the 

 steep hill -side and a waste of water dappled with shadows. It is one 

 of the main advantages of our Society that it teaches its members to 

 make a right use of their eyes ; and in some of us, the discovery that 

 even blades of grass are not all alike may perhaps have awakened into 

 activity a faculty hitherto dormant. So that now, in our continued 

 researches in the vegetable world, we become aware of a multitude of 

 beautiful forms, hitherto unnoticed, whicli daily reveal themselves 

 to us ; and it is no more possible for us now to be oppressed by the 

 sameness of our surroundings, whether at Matheran or elsewhere. 

 But though a thirst for knowledge has been thus created, we cannot so 

 easilyquench it. We have no leisure for systematic study ; and when 

 we consult our standard authors for information about plants, we are 

 repelled by a difficulty which meets us at the outset. We cannot 

 refer to the works of Hooker or Roxburgh, Brandis, Graham or 

 Dalzell, with any readiness or comfort, if we have first to find out 

 laboriously for ourselves the scientific names of plants by which alone 

 they are generally known to these writers. Though this difficulty 

 may be reduced, it is not quite removed by the use of such a synopsis 

 of Orders as that contained in the " Artificial Key" to Orders I. to 

 LXXI. of Dalzell and Gibson, published in 1875 by Captain H. H. 

 Lee, R. E., or in the Revd. Dr. Fairbank's " Key to the Natural 

 Orders of the Plants of the Bombay Presidency," published in 1876 ; 

 and members of our Botanical section are still unprovided with 

 correct lists of the local names of plants, with the aid of which they 

 would find it a comparatively simple matter to acquire the infor- 

 mation they are in search of. No doubt, we find valuable 

 glossaries of vernacular names in Roxburgh and Brandis ; but the 

 names are not always those in use in this Presidency, and the 

 glossaries do not, therefore, sufficiently meet the requirements of 

 students of the rich flora of Bombay and its neighbourhood. And 

 this remark applies also to the very full list of Bombay names in the 

 index to Sir George Birdwood's " Vegetable Products," which is 

 meant for the use rather of the physician, the merchant, and the 

 agriculturist than of the mere botanist. It is in the hope, then, 

 of removing this initial difficulty, to some extent, as regards 

 the vegetation of a certain limited area, which is much visited 

 by members of our Society, that I have compiled this catalogue, 

 which furnishes a ready method of learning the scientific name 



