“ade nee 
sexual system of Linnzus, that we have thought it advisable, in the pre- 
- sent work, to follow the natural arrangement: this will further afford. 
roots, for the same plant, within a few miles of each other: in short, the - 
natives seem to have no rule either for nomenclature or orthography ; - 
uk jurious, nay even dangerous, to insert these names, unless the natives 
know it : in. atier instances, it appears to have been not the name of the 
plant, | but the name of the village near which it was found, which had 
been marked down. Dr Wight has frequently received six or eight - 
names, totally distinct from each other, and formed from very different - 
they have no means of producing an uniformity of names, and very fre- - 
quently confound one name with another, so that our inserting these 
would only tend to mislead, in place of proving an aid in the investiga- - 
tion of an unknown plant, by one unacquainted with botany. Owing to - 
very different plants having the same native name, we have occasionally 
known dangerous mistakes originate, by erroneously substituting active | 
medicines when those of an opposite kind were intended, and vice versa. - 
On these last grounds particularly, we not only think it useless but in- - 
themselves shall have discovered some method by which a plant shall be - 
known throughout by but one name, and that name shall be restricted 
to the individual plant. "We cannot too strongly object to the practice 
of some French botanists of our own day, converting these most un 
meaning and usually harsh sounding names into generic ones; a prac 
tice only to be tolerated in the case of plants well known, and already 
rendered somewhat classical, by the figures in Rheede and Rumphius. . 
_ As to the limits of our Flora, it will be found, on looking at a map, 
to be very extensive : our intention was to include all the tract of country 
that lies within the irregular-sided triangle formed by Cape Comorin, 
Surat, and Rajahmundry ; or, in other words, from North lat. 8° to 21? on 
the west coast, and to about 17? on the east; and from East longitude 
73° to 83°. But the Malabar coast has been almost totally. neglected as 
to botany since the days of Rheede; and notwithstanding our utmost 
exertions, we have not succeeded in obtaining a single species from the 
Bombay Presidency. According to the map in Dr Wallich's splendid: 
work so often referred to, Col. Sykes appears to have explored the neigh- 
bourhood of Bombay ; but we have no information about his collections. 
It is to be hoped that some of the Company’s officers resident there, 
when they know the great exertions that have been made in the other 
Presidencies, and see the noble patronage which the Company affords 
to science, will one day wipe away the stain. Our present information 
is limited to the east coast, the extreme southern part of the west, and 
the central southern provinces. 
The uncertainty of the number of stamens in the genera, and often 
also in the same species, of tropical plants, puts so much at defiance the 
