Introduction. xxvii 



Sir J. Hooker's ie Flora of British India" is, of course, the 

 authoritative work for all India, and invaluable for reference, 

 though it is too large and expensive for those whom I desire to 

 serve. Besides which, owing to the immense range of country- 

 it refers to (far greater than the limits of British India), it 

 includes such a vast number of species as to make identifi- 

 cation in very many cases difficult, except for very advanced 

 botanists. 



2. Professor Oliver's "First Book of Indian Botany" is 

 useful for the study of the orders, &c., but it does not profess 

 to describe more species than are sufficient to serve as examples 

 of each order. 



3. The " Bombay Flora " of Dalzell and Gibson, published 

 in 1861, is the only work which professes to give a full list of 

 the plants known in Western India up to that time. It is 

 what I always worked with, for want of a better book ; but 

 its defects are very great, the chief being that it contains 

 descriptions of species only, without any of orders or genera, so 

 that it was next to useless without two or three other books to 

 refer to. The language also is exceedingly technical, and there 

 is an (apparently intentional) absence of everything in the way 

 of popular description or information. The book is, I believe, 

 out of print. 



4. Graham's " Plants of Bombay" is, from its accuracy and 

 easy style, a most valuable little book, but it is little more than 

 a list of plants known nearly sixty years ago, as the author 

 unfortunately died (in 1838) before the larger work which 

 he proposed to bring out was well in hand. The book was 

 difficult to get twenty years ago, and must be much more 

 scarce now. 



5. Roxburgh's " Flora Indica " contains the most full and 

 admirable descriptions of the plants which he knew ; but it 

 contains only a fraction of the plants now known, and of that 

 fraction only a small proportion are found in Western India. 



6. Dr. Brandis's two books on Indian trees are most valuable 

 as to all trees, including a good many which in one part of 

 India or another are found only as shrubs. Smaller and more 

 partial works I need not refer to. 



