BOTANY : ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 39 



renders it almost useless for any but a professional botanist. Pago 

 after page is taken up with descriptions of plants found only in the 

 Himalayas, or Ceylon, or Java, or the Straits, so that those which 

 belong to what we may call India proper, are in a way crowded 

 out. But this is not the only objection. The great expeuse of the 

 work is a fatal one as regards ordinary students. Then also as to the 

 grouping of orders. Many will have noticod that the old division of 

 exogens into Thalamlfiorce, Cahjclfiorm and Oorolliflorcv does not 

 appear, and where one is always wanting more light to take away 

 even a little of what there was before is a distinct hardship. But 

 the absence ©f these divisions does not mean that they have been 

 abandoned, but that they are assumed to be known, for I was told 

 at Kew that the Indian Flora, like all others prepared there, is based 

 on Bentham and Hooker's " Genera Plantarutn," and in this not only 

 are these three great divisions of orders given, but a fourth is in- 

 troduced, Discifloree, and the orders are also arranged in groups 

 subordirate to those great divisions. Added to this the similarities 

 and differences of each order from its immediate neighbours is there 

 given, and this every one will acknowledge to be most valuable. 

 But the" Genera Plantarum" is quite out of the reach of the ordinary 

 botanical students, for, besides being a large and very expensive 

 work, it is written in Latin. * Thus thei'e is practically nothing 

 systematic as to India generally which the unscientific botanist can 

 turn to to help him in identifying the plants of the Bombay Presi- 

 dency. I ought perhaps to mention Professor Oliver's little book 

 C First Book of Indian Botany ") which is intended to teach the begin- 

 ner the orders common in India, and which might therefore, to some 

 extent, make up for the deficiencies of Dalzell and Gibson. But 

 I never found it of much use, the descriptions, I think, are too diffi- 

 cult, the examples given far too few ; it is, in fact, too much the 

 ■work of a professional botanist, and it smells of the Herbarium 

 rather than of the open contry. If it had gone entirely on the lines 

 of Lindley's " School Botany " (for England), an old and valued 



* I feet bound to add, to prevent any one takiug trouble to get the inform- 

 ation, that neither the division Discifloree, nor the subordinate groupings of orders, 

 will be found of any use to the ordinary student. For there are almost as many 

 orders without conspicuous discs as with them in Discifloree and some orders with 

 conspicuous discs (e. g, Myrtaeees, Uiiilellif rm and Aralincra',) are left in Ohlyei- 

 Jtortc. And the subordinate groupings of orders I found useless, becau&e in the first 

 place the definitions are full of alternatives, and in the second place the distinctions 

 depend mainly on such obscure po'nts as the number of cells in the ovary, position 

 of the ovules, nature of the albumen, and so on. 



