( 2 ) 



which will greatly facilitate the identification of plants by those (may they 

 be many !) who use the book. If there be given with the concluding part 

 of the work equally good keys to the natiu-al families, and also a copious 

 glossary, there will remain no excuse for any inhabitant of the Bombay 

 Presidency, of moderate intelligence and education, for not making himself 

 acquainted with the name of any plant he may find growing wild within 

 its boundaries. 



A noteworthy feature in the work is the absence of most of the old and 

 obsolete synonyms, which, however interesting and valuable to the systematic 

 expert, are confusing and meaningless to the classes for whom these pro- 

 vincial floras are mainly intended. While, however, synonymy is thus 

 curtailed, the date of the original publication of each species is given 

 immediately after the name of its author. Notes on the economic uses of 

 plants are given, and also vernacular names ; and, in the description of 

 every species, reference is made to Sir Joseph Hooker's Flora, Dr. Watts' 

 Dictionary of Economic Indian Pi-oducts is also freely quoted. 



The book is published under the auspices of the Secretary of State for 

 India, on the recommendation of Dr. Prain, Director of the Botanical Survey 

 of India, and of Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, Director of the Royal Botanic 

 Garden, Kew. It is excellently got up, and it is not unduly costly. In 

 every way it is a publication in respect of which all concerned may be 

 warmly congratulated. 



From the JOURNAL OF BOTANY for November 1901, p. 392. 



The Floba of the Presidency of Bombay. By Theodore Cooke, 

 C.I.E., etc., formerly Principal of the College of Science at Poona, and 

 Director of the Botanical Survey of Western India. Part I. Pp. 192. 

 London : Taylor & Francis. Price 8s. 



TfiE Flora of British India, edited, and for the most part also elaborated, 

 by the veteran botanist. Sir Joseph Hooker, had for its scope, not only the 

 vegetation of the whole of the Empire, from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin 

 and Tenasserim, but also that of the provinces of Malacca and Wellesley, in 

 the Malay Peninsula, and of the adjacent islands of Penang and Singapore. 

 In that monumental work there had been brought together, not only the 

 bulk of the information recorded in the books and scattered papers of the 

 earlier writers on Indian botany, but also descriptions of many of the species 

 named but undescribed in the great Wallichian Herbarium, and of the crowd 

 of species, alike unnamed and undescribed, which had been brought together 

 in the herbaria of numerous Indian travellers and collectors. Sir Joseph's 

 work is a signal example of the centralization of botanical knowledge. It 

 affords an admirable basis for the elaboration, in greater detail, of the 

 individual floras of the various provinces included in the Indian Empire. 



