PREFACE. Vll 



avoidance of repetition in the descriptions and remarks on each species, 

 will enable me to compress the whole into a portable form. 



With reg'ard to citations of previous works, and references to authors, 

 these have been reduced to what appears to be most useful and desirable 

 for working" and especially Indian botanists. As a rule, all Indian 

 Floras are quoted, as also the work wherein the species was first de- 

 scribed under the name it bears ; the chief exceptions to the latter are 

 in cases where the author has redescribed the plant in a subsequent 

 better known general work, when the latter alone is cited.* 



I have been compelled to confine the citations of numbered dis- 

 tributed collections to Wallich's; to have introduced the numbers 

 of Wight's, Jacquemont's, Hohenacker's, Strachey and Winterbot- 

 tom's, Griffith's, Falconer's, Heifer's, Maingay's, Thwaites's, Hooker 

 fil. and Thomson's, and other collections that have been distri- 

 buted from Kew and elsewhere, would have added at least another 

 volume to the work, and would have prolonged indefinitely the time 

 and cost of its production. All such references, if not checked 

 in the proofs, as well as in the MS., are sure to abound in errors ; as 

 do indeed the collections themselves, requiring- in such cases the 

 introduction of cross references, discussions and critical notes, essential 

 for the verification of specimens, but not necessarily of species. More- 



* Thus De Candolle's fragmentary " Systema" is not quoted for plants subsequently 

 included in his universally used " Prodromus ;" nor Boissier's inaccessible " Diagnoses 

 Plantarum Orientalium" for those subsequently included in his great work, the " Flora 

 Orientalis." The interposition of a semicolon between the author's name and that of 

 the work cited, indicates that the plant was not first described in that work ; its absence 

 indicates that it was. 



With regard to the vexed question, whether to attach to a species the name of the 

 author who first described it, or of him who first put it into the genus to which I think 

 that it belongs, I have adopted the latter alternative, chiefly on the principle that a right 

 comprehension of genera is of higher importance than the power of describing a species. 

 The number of species described by authors who cannot determine their affinities, in- 

 creases annually, and I regard the naturalist who puts a described plant into its proper 

 position in regard to its allies, as rendering a greater service to science than its de- 

 scriber, when he either puts it into a wrong place, or throws it into any of those 

 chaotic heaps miscalled genera, with which systematic works still abound. I however 

 admit, that no laws or usages embrace all cases of disputed authority or priority, 

 and that the best hitherto proposed are open to great abuses ; but after many years' 

 experience I find that the plan which, in common with the majority of botanists, I have 

 followed, is open to the fewest objections, and does justice to the greatest and most de- 

 serving number of naturalists. 



