A CATALOGUE OF THE FLORA OF MATHERAN. 205 



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of a plant of which the vernacular name is known. Almost every 

 coolie at Matheran knows the names of most of the Matheran trees. 

 Indeed for some plants you may get a brace of names or more, 

 if you will only question your informant long enough. My own 

 particular coolie, Krishna, in the course of two hours spent in the 

 Primeval Forest and below Chowk Point, gave me no less than 75 

 names, which he told me he had learnt in the forest, with an air as if 

 the trees themselves had told them to him. With full confidence in the 

 sources of his information, I have included these names in the third 

 column of the catatogue and in the index appended to it, with many 

 others furnished by Mr. Jaykrishna Indraji, Curator of Forests in the 

 Porbandar State, a keen botanist, who lent much efficient aid to the 

 late Dr. Sakharam Arjun in the collection of his Bombay herbarium. 

 I am much indebted indeed to him, and also to Dr. Kirtikar, 

 for carefully revising the whole of the catalogue, which can now, 

 with the aid of Krishna or any other hill florist, be used for the 

 purpose for which it is intended. I would only add that those 

 who so use it must not expect to find it by any means a com- 

 plete list of the flora of Matheran. It is a fair-weather catalogue, 

 written in the month of May and the early days of June, when 

 nniny plants which blossom in the rains or the cold-weather are 

 dried up, past all recognition. It is a completer list, therefore, 

 of trees and perennial shrubs and climbers than of herbaceous plants , 

 though it contains also the names of a few such plants, inserted 

 either from memory of past cold-weather visits to the Hill, or 

 obtained from friends or from Mr. Campbell's Gazeteer, or the 

 Revd. Mr. Gell's Catalogue, published now many years ago, and after- 

 wards republished by Dr. Theodore Cooke. Such as it is, it is as com- 

 plete as it could be made in the course of several very pleasant rambles 

 in the company of our Vice-President, Dr. D. MacDonald, Mr. Chester 

 MacXaghten, and Mr. Jaykrishna. Such as it is, I offer it to the Society 

 as an instalment only of a work which I hope will be taken up, conti- 

 nued, and enlarged by others, if not by myself, till we are in posses- 

 sion of tolerably complete catalogues of the flora of all parts of the 

 Presidency. I can only hope that members of the Society who have 

 the good fortune to visit Matheran during the next six months will 

 remorselessly criticize and amplify my work and favour our editor in 

 due course with the result of their labours. To this end, I have 

 asked Mr. Sterndale to issue a few interleaved copies of the cata- 

 logue in pamphlet form, and these can be procured from the Secretary. 



