-realia and garden vegetables ought to lead to such an hypothesis without 
PREFACE. xxi 
considerable portion towards our first volume by the elucidation of our 
Leguminose, but when further delay was impossible, he, unfortunately 
for us and for the botanical world, found himself prevented by other 
numerous and more pressing avocations. 
Our descriptions of the genera will usually be found detailed, while 
those of the species almost always much exceed the Linnean rule of 
twelve words. Species, however, have so multiplied since the days of 
the Father of Botany, that it may be readily conceived that specific 
characters, having to distinguish between more species than before, must 
sustain a corresponding elongation ; but we readily allow that this is not 
the principle by which we have been actuated. In a country of such an 
extent as India, much novelty must still be looked for ; and our aim has 
therefore been, in framing characters for the species, to exhaust every 
essential point not common to the whole genus, and to exhibit the va- 
rious variations of foliage and pubescence which have fallen under our 
own observation: our characters may therefore be more properly called 
abridged deseriptions, every thing superfluous or of no importance being 
omitted. We trust, therefore, that when new plants are discovered, 
their differences will be readily observed; and, on the other hand, we 
hope that if a plant, although coming from a very different part of the 
country, falls under our description, it will not be deemed necessary to 
bestow on it a new appellation. 
We shall perhaps be severely censured for cutting down species. . We 
have all along considered it as trifling with nature to separate species on — 
slight or variable grounds, nor could we ever understand the “ cui bono" — 
for which so much ingenuity in splitting hairs has been wasted. Before — 
we determined what was a species, we examined with care numerous 
specimens from the same and different localities ; and so far we have had 
an advantage over many other of the European botanists who have de- - 
scribed Indian plants, they having only seen one or two isolated speci- 
mens. Numerous observations too were made on the plants in their na- _ 
tural situation, the result of which went to prove, what we have fre- 
quently endeavoured to enforce by examples throughout the present . 
. volume, that no precise shape of leaf or quantity of pubescence is of any 
. value, although both of these seem in each species to be limited wi: : 
. eertain variations. With regard to varieties, we have seldom distin- - 
. guished any unless well marked and tolerably constant; we are aware, 
- indeed, that these correspond to what some naturalists call species, but 
our own observations have convinced us, that varieties and forms, as 
well as species, may be constant in similar situations, and even in wide- 
ly different situations, for many years, if raised from seeds either obtained _ 
from the original locality or from cultivated plants; the cultivated ce- - 
. 
: le tone proof. 
