ACTA ET AGENDA. 571 



an object for his natural interest in the study of the vegetable kingdom 

 I think this gentleman is only a type of a great class, who -would with 

 pleasure devote all the leisure time that could be spared from their 

 necessary duties to their beloved science if they only knew in what way, 

 if they were shown a field of labour. To do this is not so very difficult. 

 There are many botanical fields in the Bombay Presidency which have 

 not been cultivated as yet or only to a small extent, and I do not 

 hesitate to say, that the work, which is still to be done, is of greater 

 interest and of greater importance than which has been done up to now : 

 I mean the solutions of all those questions which are called now T -a-days 

 collectively " plant-geography " in its widest sense. It is not in the 

 least my intention to detract in any way from the merits of the work 

 accomplished by generations. I only want to say that the enumeration, 

 identification, and description of plants is not the final end of botanical 

 inquiry, but only a necessary step towards higher and more important 

 results. 



Some years back I had the opportunity to speak to some well Lb own- 

 botanists at the South Kensington Museum. From their conversation 

 I could gather how much they regretted that with regard to plant-geo- 

 graphy scarcely any attempt had been made in India. A short perusal 

 of the botanical literature shows that the sketches of this kind are 

 very few. 



Perhaps one of the oldest is that by M. G. da Silva, giving obser- 

 vations on the vegetation of Goa. ] Dr. Forbes Koyle was the first 

 to attempt to show the characteristic features of the geographical 

 distribution of the plants of Northern India taking into consideration 

 elevation and climate and the flora of the adjoining countries. In the 

 same paper he made interesting remarks on the vegetation of some 

 Indian lakes. 2 The preliminary essay to the first volume of the " Flora 

 Indica" is well known. Oleghorn published an article " On the sand- 

 binding plants of the Madras beach," 3 and D. Brandis wrote an account 

 on the distribution of the forests in India, for the " Geographical Maga- 

 zine," illustrated by a tinted map showing the amount of rainfall in the 



* Manoel Galvao da Silva ; Observacoes sobre a historia natural de Goa, (worked out in 

 1780, edited and published in 1862 by J. H. da Cunha Rivara). 



2 Forbes Eoyle : " General observations on the geographical distribution of the Flora of 

 India, and remarks on the vegetation of its lakes," in " Report of the 16th meeting of the 

 British Association, XV., p. 74." (1846). 



u In the London Journal of Botany, VIII. (1858). 

 3 



