PREFACE. 
Тнів paper provides descriptions and figures of the Asiatic Dalbergias. Тһе 
genus Dalbergia is economically important: it includes not a few trees which yield 
esteemed timbers. It is also taxonomically difficult ; generally, since it does not 
lend itself readily to natural subdivision, and in detail, because its species are hard 
to delimit. Some of the difficulties are accidental, occasionally perhaps subjective ; 
many, however, are real. 
In works published between 1781, when the genus was proposed by the 
younger Linnzus, and 1851, when Bentham first methodically subdivided it, 
misconceptions as to its natural limits so vitiate the accounts of Dalbergia as to 
make it uncertain whether individual species really belong. Since 1851, thanks 
entirely to Bentham’s satisfactory characterisation, the number of species referred 
to the genus that are not Dalbergias has been small. Difficulties as to species 
have not, however, diminished in the same way. Partly from the recognition as 
distinct of forms that prove on examination to belong to already established species, 
partly because Dalbergias from China, Indo-China, Malaya, and Papuasia have in 
local treatises been referred too hastily to recognised Indian ones, it is uncertain, 
in any work published between 1851 and 1901, that particular species, reported 
from regions other than their Zoe; classici, are entitled to the specific epithets 
applied. | 
This state of affairs was first appreciated by the writer when, in 1896, at 
the request of Бтв GEORGE Kine, he undertook to arrange the Malayan material of 
the genus preserved in the Calcutta Herbarium. Two articles in the Journal of the 
Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1897, which were the outcome of this study, invite 
comparison with similar articles by Miquel in 1855, by Kurz in 1876, and by 
Baker in the same year. Тһе account of the Indian species by Baker, in the 
Flora of British India, was written with all the benefit of reference to the writings 
of Miquel, of Bentham, and of Kurz, and all the advantage of access to fuller 
suites of material than were at their disposal: it therefore throws much light on 
points that to Miquel and to Kurz were obscure. It is to be hoped that the 
writer's articles, prepared with corresponding advantages, throw some light on points 
that were obscure to Baker. But it is not unusual in studies of the kind, 
to find that as one doubt disappears another arises: the results of 1897 were 
therefore published with the feeling that they leave as much to be desired as do 
the contributions of Miquel, of Kurz, and of Daker. 
The two pitfalls of taxonomy have been incidentally mentioned. Тһе multipli- 
cation of forms among the Asiatic Dalbergias—some 140 names have been employed 
kd 
