PREFACE. 



The object, scope, and design of this Work, together with the 

 motives that induced us to commence it, are all detailed in 

 the Introductory Essay. 



It will be seen that we anticipated considerable difficulty 

 in our proposed attempt to establish the genera and species 

 of the ' Flora Indica' on a sound and philosophical basis, 

 and to unravel their synonymy. The result has proved that 

 we underrated the difficulties of the task, for the number of 

 plants described is very much smaller than we hoped to have 

 accomplished, and in many of the genera the species are not 

 satisfactorily limited. This has arisen from many causes, to 

 two of the most important of which, as suggestive of improve- 

 ments that may be introduced into botanical science, we shall 

 briefly allude. 



In the first place, a critical study of the vast number of 

 well-selected specimens that we possess of most of the plants, 

 has enlarged those already extended views of the variability 

 of species which we have professed in our Introductory Essay. 

 In every case, the more specimens we examined, and especially 

 if taken from different individuals, the greater the difficulty 

 in framing diagnoses. This has shaken our confidence in the 

 sufficiency of the descriptions we have drawn up from few spe- 

 cimens; and it proves that the characters of exotic plants, 



