24-0 BOTANICAL OBSERVATIONS OX 



have been selected for th-?ir novelty, beauty, poetical 

 fame, reputed use in medicine, or supposed holi- 

 ness ; and frequcm allusions to them all will be 

 found, if the Sanscrit latfgti#g£ should ever be gene- 

 rally studied, in the popular and sacred poems of the 

 ancient Hindus, in their medical books and law- 

 tracts, and even in the Vedas themselves. Though, un- 

 happily I cannot profess, with the fortunate Szi-ede, 

 to have seen without glasses all the parts of the flow- 

 ers which I have described,' yet you may be assured 

 that I have mentioned no part of them which I have 

 not again and again examined with my own evesj 

 and though the weakness of my sight will for ever 

 prevent my becoming a botanist, yet I have in some 

 little degree atoned for that fatal defect by extreme 

 attention, and by an ardent zeal for the most lovely 

 and fascinating branch of natural knowledge. 



Before I was acquainted with the method pur- 

 sued by Van Riieede, necessity had obliged me to 

 follow a similar plan on a smaller scale ; and, as his 

 mode cf studying botany, in a country and climate 

 by no means favourable to botanical excursions, 

 may be adopted more successfully by those wlv> 

 have more leisure than [ shall ever enjoy, I present 

 you with an interesting passage from one of his pre- 

 faces, to which I should barely have referred you, 

 if his great work were not unfortunately confined, 

 from its rarity, to very few hands. He informs us, 

 in an introduction to his third volume, " that several 

 " Indian physicians and Brahmem had composed by 



his 



