138 Hortus Suburbanus Calcuttensis, 



Here is a great mistake. Persons who are fond of flowers, but 

 unacquainted with botany, need a work that will afford them some 

 general information concerning the plants in their gardens, and it 

 ought to be known, that this book of Voigt's supplies this want to 

 a much greater extent than any other -book that has ever been pub- 

 lished on Indian Botany. For the information of such readers, we 

 may say, that the work treats on nearly every plant which has 

 found its way into the gardens of India, besides a large body of wild 

 flowers and fruits, and many rare exotics. There are 5,515 different 

 species enumerated in the work, and these are distributed, not in 

 an artificial manner, not into classes according to the number of 

 their stamens, but according to their natural resemblances : resem- 

 blances which are often as manifest to the uninitiated as to the 

 greatest adept in Botany. Thus plants that bear pods form one 

 natural family : those bearing heads of compound flowers, like the 

 daisy and sunflower another : those that have their flowers disposed 

 in umbels a third, and so on to the number of 278 families ; each 

 one deriving its name from one of its most distinguished genera. 

 Each of these families is introduced in the work before us, with 

 much general information concerning it ; as whether it consists of 

 trees, or shrubs, or herbs ; the number of its genera and species, 

 and their distribution in different parts of the world. If the family 

 have any general properties, those properties are mentioned ; but if 

 its properties be varied they are described under each species. 

 Under each species is given the different names by which the same 

 plant has been described by different authors, with references to the 

 volume and page where the description may be found ; and if a 

 figure of the plant has been published, a similar reference accom- 

 panies it. The places where the plant is indigenous are also enu- 

 merated, so that the reader knows, how little soever he may know of 

 Botany, what plants are common in his neighbourhood. In this way 

 the book furnishes, to a considerable extent, materials for local floras 

 for a great number of places in India ; and preserves the observer 

 from the common error of supposing a plant that has been naturali- 

 zed to be a native. The reader is also furnished with the properties 

 of each species, and the uses to which it is applied, or capable of 

 being applied ; the time of flowering and bearing fruit ; and, when- 



