INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. ' 65 



presented to the Lirmean Society a similar named set, as com- 

 plete as possible, together with all his duplicates, for the pur- 

 pose of distribution : his intentions in this matter have, how- 

 ever, unfortunately not yet been carried into effect. 



7. Besides the herbaria of Wallich and Royle,, the Linnean 



Society possesses several very valuable collections of Indian 

 plants, which have been of great service to us. These are — 

 1. An authentic collection of Roxburgh's plants, for the most 

 part named. The names are chiefly Roxburgh's earlier ones, 

 but they are in all cases identifiable with those of his Flora 

 Indica, by means of the coloured drawings at the India 

 House, of which copies made by Sir William Hooker, as re- 

 lated in detail in Wight and Arnott's Prodromus, are at our 

 disposal. With these means of determining Roxburgh's 

 plants, we trust that few, if any, of those contained in the 

 orders which we have investigated will remain in obscurity. 

 Several species not hitherto recognized either by Wallich, or 

 by Wight and Arnott, will be found in the first part of our 

 Flora, and the number may be expected to be increased. 2. 

 A large collection of plants of the Bombay Presidency, chiefly 

 from the neighbourhood of Punah, presented by Colonel Sykes 

 to the Society. These amount to nearly a thousand species, 

 and the specimens, though often indifferent and much injured 

 by insects, are, in general, capable of determination. 3. The 

 Smithian Herbarium contains a good many specimens from 

 Hamilton and others, and is valuable as a means of deter- 

 mining the species described by Sir J. Smith in Rees' Cyclo- 

 paedia and in the ' Exotic Botany/ where he has occasionally 

 indicated new Indian plants. It is almost superfluous to add, 

 that the Linnean Herbarium is the gem of the Society's pos- 

 sessions. 



8. The collection distributed by Captain Strachey and Mr. 

 Winterbottom consists chiefly of the plants of Kumaon and 

 Garhwal, and of those of the adjacent parts of Tibet. Captain 

 Richard Strachey was appointed by the Indian dovcrmurnt 

 to make a scientific survey of the province of Kumaon, and 



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