PREFACE. 
(PoE chief object of the present work has been to 
arrange and describe the woody plants of British 
Burma, and in so doing to furnish a means by which the 
forester in Pegu might be enabled to name his trees and 
shrubs, and thus be placed in a position to work up the 
more practical questions and bearings which naturally 
can only be supplied by those employed in the Forest 
Department itself. 
Those acquainted with the primitive state of Burn 
will never expect an. exhaustive treatise on the woody 
vegetation of that country. Indeed, I can offer but a 
very incomplete account of its Forest Flora. The num- 
ber of woody plants here described amounts only to 
about 2,000 species, while the herbaceous vegetation 
exceeds 2,500, or four woody plants to five herbs—a 
-yather anomalous proportion as compared with other 
tropical countries similarly circumstanced, which show a 
decided preponderance of woody over herbaceous plants, 
vig., one and a half to three of the former to one of the 
latter. This forcibly demonstrates how many woody 
_ plants must still remain to be detected. 
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