PREFACE. O 



or local names, which, in some instances, are unknown even m the 

 countries to which the plant is native in localities remote from the dis- 

 tricts where it grows. The vernacular names of the plants of India are 

 legion, nearly every district or province having several, which may be 

 either widely or only slightly different, from the names of the same 

 plants growing in a neighboring province. It would be undesirable, 

 therefore, if not impossible, to reproduce a considerable number of 

 these local or vernacular names; and another trouble with such names 

 is the liability of error through their orthography. Many of them 

 doubtless have been spelled phonetically by the different authorities, 

 and the difference between chiti and jiti, as an example, is sufficiently 

 great to suggest two different plants, when the same thing is meant 

 by both spellings. No doubt vernacular names have been multiplied 

 in this manner, resulting in more or less confusion. 



Another source of confusion has been the use of names generically 

 that have been applied to a particular species, or vice versa. "Mahoe" 

 and "silk grass" as English common names and u pita v and u keratto v 

 as native names are examples. The keratto of Jamaica is Agave Mor- 

 risii; the keratto of the Leeward Islands is Agave polyantha, but a 

 dozen other species of Agave may be known as keratto in other places, 

 or keratto may stand for the whole group of Agaves. Silk grass means 

 anything from coarse Agave fiber to the delicate filament drawn from 

 pineapple leaves. It will be seen, therefore, with the indiscriminate 

 use of such familiar common names, how difficult it may be to avoid 

 falling into error, and when we consider vernacular or tribal names, 

 error is almost unavoidable. Regarding this point the author and com- 

 piler begs to state that while the native names used in this work have 

 been the subject of most careful investigation, with valuable assistance 

 rendered by botanists in the countries from which they were derived, 

 e rrors no doubt have crept into the work. Many of the fibers collected 

 at the expositions, particularly those from Central and South American 

 countries, have borne on their labels only the native common or, in 

 some instances, the narrowly localized "country" names, and frequently 

 it has been utterly impossible to trace such names. 



The roots of many of these native names are words common to the 

 vocabulary of the country, and when used in combinations form a com- 

 pound appellation, such as JEmbira preta, or the black embira, the root 

 of embira signifying something resistant. This might be equivalent in 

 English to such a name as the "black tough." In unfamiliar South 

 American Spanish it at least affords something that may stand for a 

 name, slender as the clue may be toward the identification of the plant 

 from which derived. Many of the East Indian vernacular names are 

 simply compounds of adjectives with such nouns in everyday use as 

 "tree," "root," "vine," etc. Some of these are equivalent in value, 

 therefore, to similar names employed in this country, as "blood-root," 

 "gum-tree," and others. 



