PREFACE. 
In the Preface to the Prodromus Flore Peninsule Indiz Orientalis, will be found a brief 
historical sketch of the rise, progress and present state of Indian Botany. From that sketch 
it will be perceived that until the publication of that volume, every work since the time of 
Linneus, with the exception of DeCandolle’s Systema Vegetabilium and Prodromus Systematis, 
treating of Indian plants, was arranged according to the Linnzan sexual or artificial system. It 
has naturally followed that nearly all those who had devoted their leisure to the investigation of 
Indian plants have adopted that system, and find the study of them according to their natural 
affinities often exceedingly difficult if not actually irksome, even though the advantages of 
the latter over the former method so greatly preponderate as scarcely to admit of any com- 
parison being instituted between thetwo. Instigated, therefore, partly by a long cherished wish 
to promote the extension of Botanical pursuits by diffusing a knowledge of species, partly by 
the desire of lessening to others the difficulties which beset my own path when passing from 
the one method of study to the other; but principally in the hope of being able to show that 
for the attainment of a correct and comprehensive knowledge of the properties and uses of 
plants, whether as food, medicine, or in the arts,a much more direct and certain method is, 
through an enlarged and philosophical acquaintance with their natural affinities than by the 
most laborious, but empirical, search for individual properties when entered upon without any such 
guide as the knowledge of affinities supplies to our researches. To elucidate these affinities 
and at the same time to furnish the Indian Botanist with the means of identifying species this 
work and its Companion, the “ Figures of Indian Plants” were undertaken, and even at their 
present early stage the author has reason to believe with much advantage towards the accom- 
plishment of this design. 
According to the natural arrangement, all plants, whether of a province, a kingdom, or of the 
whole world, agreeing in certain ascertained peculiarities of structure, taken not from one set of 
organs only, but from every part of the plant commencing with the root and ascending to the 
perfect seed, are grouped together as one order or family under a name derived either from a 
prominent genus of the group or from some striking peculiarity of the order (Ranunculaceae 
from Ranunculus: Cruciferae from their cruciate flowers: Leguminosae from the leguminous 
fruit, &c.). Such groups if correctly associated according to their affinities, that is organic 
structure and physiological peculiarities, would, it was presumed, be found to participate in the 
kind and qualities of secreted products which result from the operations of organic life. 
In this anticipation the philosophical investigator of nature has not been disappointed, for, 
so constantly does the fact agree with the theory that it is now known, except in rare instances, 
