VIU PRErACE. 



Since the date of Dalzell and Gibson's ' Bombay Flora,' thanks chiefly 

 to the work done by the Botanical Survey, the number of species of 

 plants known to occur in Bombay has greatly increased. As an instance, 

 I may mention that, under the Natural Orders Leguminosae and Rubiacese 

 the present volume contains respectively 284 and 80 species of indigenous 

 or naturalized plants, while the same Orders in Dalzell and Gibsons ' Flora ' 

 contain 1 79 and 56, 



1 have, as far as possible, given the vernacular names of plants, but it 

 may be as well to caution students of Indian Botany against blindly 

 accepting the name given to a plant by a native coolie. Natives who 

 spend most of their lives in the jungle and who are really ivoodmen, are 

 generally correct in their nomenclature ; but the ordinary coolie is often 

 utterly ignorant, yet, rather than confess his ignorance, Avill sometimes 

 invent a name to satisfy the " sahib." The names, too, often vary in 

 different districts, and it is not uncommon to find the same vernacular 

 name applied to entirely distinct plants. Still the native names, if 

 honestly given and not manufactured for the occasion, may often prove 

 valuable, as I have frequently found to be the case. 



Prior to the establishment of the Survey, botanical work was the duty 

 of no official. All the botanical work was carried on, as a labour of love, 

 by gentlemen engaged in various branches of the public service, who 

 devoted to their beloved science all the time that could be spared from 

 their legitimate avocations. The work done in the Konkan and Sind by 

 Dr. J. Ellerton Stocks of the Indian Medical Service, that done in the 

 Konkan by Mr. Law of the Civil Service, and in Belgaura and Kanara 

 by Dr. Eitchie, are matters of botanical history, and to these pioneers, as 

 well as to Messrs. Nimmo, John Graham, Dalzell and Gibson, all of 

 whom worked under no inconsiderable difficulties, botanical science oweti 

 a deep and lasting debt of gratitude. I must not omit to mention the 

 excellent work done by Mr, G. M. Woodrow, who after many years of 

 arduous labour in the botanic field, at first as my assistant and subse- 

 quently as Director of the Botanical Survey of Western India, has 

 recently returned to Europe, nor of Mr. George Gammie who has 

 succeeded Mr. AV^oodrovv. Mr. Talbot, of the Indian Forest Service, 

 whose labours in N. Kanara, where he has discovered several new species 

 of plants, are well known, is still at work in India, and we may expect 

 further valuable results from his untiring energy. 



It can hardly be expected that the present ' Flora ' w ill be an 

 absolutely exhaustive one, although 1 have every reason to believe 



