6 BENGAL -PLANTS. 
ested in the Bengal Flora, this information is supplemented by 
references to Roxburgh’s Flora Indica and Hooker’s Flora of 
British India, where descriptions of the majority of the species 
are to be found, and to Watt’s Dictionary of Economic Products, 
where such of them as are useful are enumerated. Having regard, 
however, to the fact that the only one of these works, Roxburgh’s 
‘a Indica, which can, by reason of its size, be conveniently 
used in the field, besides being the oldest, and on that account the 
least complete, does not cover the whole of the area under review, 
it has been considered advisable to provide, for field-use, definitions 
of the natural orders and genera to which our species belong, with 
a series of keys a to assist the student in referring any 
plant to its order and gen Knowing, further, the difficulty often 
a by the Vicidindl in using any “natural” system of 
ion, an attempt has been made, by the employment of 
rn now generally discarded, but by no means therefore despicable, 
‘artificial’ sexual system, to provide an alternative route to his 
where a genus contains more than one species, to facilitate their 
determination by providing keys to all the species under the 
various genera. Beyond this it does not, for the moment, appear 
advisable to go. The assistance that it is hoped many of those 
who may use the present work shall be willing to give must be 
awaited before an attempt can be made to issue what should aim i 
at being a complete Local Flora, giving succinct botanical descrip- — 
tions of all the species that occur within the limits of the Lower 
Provinces and Chittagon 
8: 
The inclusion in this list of cultivated plants, exotic so far as the 
a 
Lower Provinces are concerned, calls for some explanation. The — 
selection—for it is not contended that every exotic species to be — 
found in gardens in Bengal is here referred to—has been governed 
by the principle that it is advisable to include any species that is — 
of economic interest, whether for its fruit, its seed, or its timate 3 . 
or for the dye, tan, oil, fibre, or drug it may yield. As regards 
plants whose interest is purely esthetic, it has, on the other hand, 
been deemed inadvisable to encumber the list with species that 
are to be found only in the gardens of European residents or in 
those of native noblemen and gentlemen of means and taste. An 
