mo 



NATURE 



[December 13, 1894 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 



t The Editor does nol hold himself resf>onsiHe for opinions ex- 

 pressed ty his correspondents. Neither can he undertake 

 to return, or to correspond viith the writers of. rejected 

 manuscripts intended for this or any other part of NATURE. 

 No notice is taien of anonymous communications.] 



Dr. Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of 

 India. 



The notice of this important undertaking in a recent number 

 of N.^TfRE (N'ovember l, p. 4), seems to me somewliat un- 

 sympathetic, and scarcely to do justice to its undoubted merits. 

 .■Vt any rate, the Government of India, at whose instance the 

 Dictionary was prepared, might draw the conclusion from the 

 review that the work was more open to criticism than I believe 

 to be really the case. A British Government is never too ready 

 to undertake an enterprise of this kind, and anything of the 

 nature of a disappointment, when it has made the experiment, 

 i> little likely to induce it to make another. 



.\s I warmly encouraged the inception, and have taken a keen 

 interest in the progress of the Dictionary, I feel bound to ex- 

 press my opinion that it is one of the most important aids which 

 h.i« yet been given to the material advancement of India. 



.\s the reviewer correctly remarks, " the large proportion of 

 the products " of that country " are of vegetable origin." It is, 

 hoaever, astonishing how little they are known in Europe. 

 I can speak with some confidence on this subject, because, in 

 1880, the India Office transferred to Kew the entire economico- 

 botanical collections forming part of the India Museum at 

 S>uth Kensington. Their incorporation with the existing con- 

 tents of the Kew Museum was carried out under my supervision. 

 1 was struck, as every one has been who has had to do with the 

 subject, with the profusion of products for which some useful 

 purpose ought to be found in the arts. As Kew undertook the 

 duty of acting as referee with regard to these matters, 

 it became necessary to accumulate information with re- 

 gard to them. I therefore formed in my office a sort 

 of rough dictionary, in which I posted up every paper, 

 document, and scrap of information which I could collect 

 about Indian vegetable products. This enabled me to deal 

 rapidly with a great number of commercial inquiries. But for 

 this purpose. Dr. Watt's Dictionary is an infinitely superior 

 instrument. It is in constant use in my ofVici, and I am at a 

 loss 10 conceive how the day's work could now be got through 

 without it. As I am continually testing its contents, I can only j 

 express my surprise at the degree of accuracy which Dr. Watt 

 has attained. I am quite satisfied that the catalogue of not 

 very important blemishes which the reviewer has managed to 

 delect, must have co>t him no small labour. The criticisms, 

 with one exception, I do not propose to discuss. I cannot help, 

 however, regretting that the reviewer both begins and ends his 

 article with something like a sneer — in the one case at the size 

 of the book, in the other at the paper on which it is printed. 



Such an encyclopa;dia of economic products as the Dictionary 

 affords, has long been needed. Indirectly I regard it as one of 

 the outcomes of the Famine Commission, the second part of 

 whose Report was presented to Parliament in 1880. In this 

 Report (p. 175) the Commission point out that "at the root of 

 much of the poverty of the people of India . . . lies the unfor- 

 tunate circumstance that agriculture forms almost the sole 

 occupation of the mass of the population." " Facilities for 

 obtaining profitable markets (or all sorts of produce " is a neces- 

 sary means of remedying this slate of things. But it is obvious 

 that the markets will not come into existence till the products 

 ate brought into demand by better knowledge. 



The bulk of the book and the length of the articles was, 1 

 imagine, the result of a deliberate plan on the part of the De- 

 partment of Revenue and .\griculture under whose authority | 

 the Dictionary was issued. One object in view was to afford to 

 Indian officials, who cannot be expected to lake a miscellaneous 

 library about with Ihem, a standard book of reference. The 

 want of something of ibc kind led Mr. Edwin T. Atkinson, of 

 the Bengal Civil .Service, to commence a sort of industrial 

 survey of the north-western provinces. The work is only a 

 fragment, as Dr Wall's Dictionary has since covered the ground. 

 The preface to the first part (.\Ilahabad, 1876) puts the needs of 

 Indian officials so clearly, that it will be useful to quote 

 from it : 



" There ii no subject perhaps regarding which so much 



NO. I3II, VOL. 51] 



has been written and spoken as ' the development of the 

 resources of the country.' The phrase is a pretentious 

 one, and has a rounded, rolling sound worthy of many 

 of the ideas launched in its name, but really expresses what 

 must form one of the first duties cA every civilised Government. 

 As early as June 1S04 a Mr. Got! was deputed to examine the 

 forests of Rohilkhand and Gorakhpur, with the view of ascer- 

 taining what local products could be advantageously brought to 

 the notice of the European world. . . . He was followed by 

 Laidlay and others, who examined into many of the questions 

 which even now aie made the subjects of inquiry. Their re- 

 ports lie unused and unknown amid the twelve hundred volumes 

 of records composing a portion of the immense library of our 

 Board of Revenue, and surely it would be a saving 

 of money and labour if these reports were given to 

 the official and non-official public. My own inquiries have 

 shown uie that it is the tendency of all these questions to 

 crop up in cycles, with the same result, the same perfunctory 

 procedure ; and were official memory long enough to recollect 

 what has already been done, and know where to find it, one 

 half of the erratic circulars which now puzzle and worry the 

 district officers, might be answered by a reference to the cor- 

 respondence on the same subject. . . . .\ review of the efTorts 

 m.ide in the past to attain a knowledge of the resources of the 

 country is not unmixed with regret. They have all gone by 

 without leaving any trace behind them, and without advancing 

 our knowledge one single step, because they wanted organisa^ 

 tion." 



In criticising Dr. Watt's Dictionary, a statement like this 

 should be borne in mind. Dr. Wall has, in fact, and it is one 

 of the great obligations we owe to him, gutted an.I boiled down 

 the colossal and in.iccessible official literauireof India. For the 

 first time, an Indian official has at hand all that is practically 

 to be said about any local product with which he has to deal. 



These points were, I think, not clearly brought out in the 

 review in N.vture, and I think it is only due to the Govern- 

 ment of India thai they should be stated. 



There is one detailed criticism on which I absolutely take 

 issue with the reviewer. He devotes some space to the ex- 

 pression of the opinion that with regard to " drugs and ihera- 

 peulics, the details are out of place in a description of economic 

 products." He particularly objects to the inclusion of plants, 

 "solely because of some medicinal, or supposed medicinal, 

 use, frequently by ignorant people." To me the subject seems, 

 on the contrary, of the deepest importance. It is the empirical 

 knowledge acquired by "ignorant people ' which is at the 

 base of almost all our knowledge of drugs. And the extension 

 of modern therapeutics must in the main depend on following 

 up the beginnings in new directions which ignorant people have 

 made. In this respect the Dictionary is a mine of information 

 available for the guidance of future research. In India itself a 

 truslworlhy account of the properties of the plants used by the 

 natives for therapeutic or even criminal purposes, must, it seems 

 to me, be of everyday utility. 



W. T. Thiselton-Dyer. 



Royal Gardens, Kew, December S. 



I.N your recent review of the above work, attention is drawn 

 to the startling stalement that " Diamond dust is known 10 be a 

 powerful mechanical poison." This statement, occurring as it does 

 in an official work, issued by the Government of India, aroused 

 my am.azement when I first had occasion to consult the Dic- 

 tionary. It occurred to me then, and I still think, that the author 

 would have done better to have quoted the words of Colonel 

 Wilks on the subject (" South of India," vol. ii. p. 197), namely, 

 " Whatever doubts may be enleilained of llie fact, there is none 

 regarding the belief (by the Mahommedans of Southern India 

 in the power of diamonds .as a poison], and the supposed 

 ponder of diamonds is kept as a last resource like the sword of 

 the Roman, l.ul I never met with any person, who from his 

 o*n knowledge couM describe its visible 1 fleets, &c." 



Better still perhaps, iiislcad of giving what, as you have pointed 

 out, is an erroneous account of the celebrated Gaikwar's case, 

 Dr. Watt might have quoted the emphatic words of the Com- 

 missioners who tried the Gaikwar, that " Diamond dust accord- 

 ing to the best aulhoiities has no injurious eflecl on the human 

 body " (" Commission Report," p 223)' 



With some inconsistency — although Dr. Watt quotes an 

 account of the reputed medicinal qualities of prepared diamond 



