PREFACE. 



The necessity for " local " or " regional " Tloras to supplement 

 Sir Joseph Hooker's great work, ' The Flora of British India,' which 

 deals with several thousand species of plants drawn from a very wide 

 area and grown under diA'erse climatic conditions, has been fully recog- 

 nized by the highest botanical authorities. The inauguration of the 

 Botanical Survey of India and the subdivision of the great Indian 

 continent into regions, each forming a branch of the Survey, under the 

 general supervision of Major Prain, I. M.S., Director of the Royal 

 Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, has secured the collection of sufficient 

 material to warrant the preparation of regional Floras for certain 

 portions of the entire area. On the extension of the Survey to the 

 Western Presidency, I was appointed by the Government of Bombay 

 Honorary Director of the Botanical Survey of Western India, with 

 Mr. G. M. Woodrow as Assistant ; and I was further allowed the 

 services of a paid Herbarium -keeper, a few native plant-collectors, and 

 a small annual grant to provide for travelling-allowances and other 

 incidental expenses. A Herbarium * was established at the College of 

 Science at Poena, of which I was at that time Principal, and a real 

 advance was soon made in our knov\ledge of the botany of the Bombay 

 Presidency. Since my retirement, after 30 years' actual residence in 

 India, I have been selected by the Government of Bombay to carry out 

 tliis, the first of a series of regional Floras projected by the Director of 

 the Survey. 



The Presidency of Bombay, including Sind and Baroda (which latter 

 State, containing 4400 square miles, though removed in 1875 from the 



* The Herbarium at tlie College of Science wliicli had grown largely and had 

 developed into a highlj- efficient institution, was wliolly destroyed by fire in May 1902; 

 but as I fortunately possessed a good collection of my own, amassed during many 

 years' travel in the Presidency, I was able to present that Herbarium with another 

 collection of liombay plants.— T. C. 



