INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 49 



and limitation of genera and the higher groups of plants. 

 One volume only has been published, the work having been 

 interrupted by Dr. Wight's return to India in 1834. It con- 

 tains the whole of Thalamiflora, and of CalycifloreB down to 

 the commencement of Composita, including descriptions of 

 nearly 1400 species. A smaller work, entitled ' Contributions 

 to the Botany of India/ contains the peninsular Composite, 

 elaborated by De CandoUe ; the Asclepiadem, by Wight and 

 Arnott, with the addition of the extra-peninsular species col- 

 lected by Wallich and Royle, by Dr. Wight alone ; and the 

 Cyperaceoe of Wallich, Wight, and Royle, by Nees von Esen- 

 beck, with valuable annotations by Arnott. Dr. Wight has 

 also published in ' Hooker's Botanical Miscellany' some ex- 

 cellent descriptions and plates of Indian plants, and Dr. Arnott 

 has communicated various detached memoirs to the botanical 

 periodicals of the day. 



On his return to Madras Dr. Wight conceived the idea of 

 carrying out, on a very extensive scale, an illustrated work on 

 the plants of India, and in 1838 the '^Illustrations of Indian 

 Botany' were commenced, and soon after were followed by 

 the ' Icones Plantarum Indise Orientalis.' The former work, 

 which is furnished with coloured plates, contains a series of 

 memoirs on the Natural Orders, full of important informa- 

 tion with regard to species, and valuable notes on their afS- 

 nities : it terminated with the end of the second volume and 

 the 182nd plate, in 1850. In the Icones, the letterpress usu- 

 ally contains only the descriptions of the species, though in 

 the later volumes occasional general details are given, especially 

 in those natural orders which are not included in the Illustra- 

 tions. The plates of the Icones are uncoloured, and amount 

 to 2101, a surprising number, when we bear in mind that 

 they were commenced only fifteen years ago, and take into 

 consideration the excellence of the execution of the later 

 ones. In the ' SpicUegium Neilgherrense,' a third illustrated 

 work, there are coloured copies of a portion of the plates of 

 the Icones, with much valuable matter relative to the Nilghiri 



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