PEEFACE. 
This flora has been drawn up under the authority and at the 
expense of the colonial government. It forms one of a series of 
floras which have been prepared at Kew, of which those for Hong Kong 
by Mr. Bentham, of New Zealand by Dr. Hooker, and of the British 
West Indies by Dr. Grrisebach, are completed ; and those of Australia 
by Mr. Bentham, assisted by Baron von Mueller, of India edited by 
Dr. Hooker, of Tropical Africa by Professor Oliver, and of the Cape, 
begun by Harvey and Sonder, and intended to be continued by Mr. 
Thistleton Dyer, are begun, but still unfinished. 
The following are the principal books and collections from which 
our knowledge of the botany of Mauritius and its dependencies is 
derived : — 
1. Commerson. An extensive collection, made between 1770 and 
1780. Commerson, after his voyage round the world as naturalist to 
the expedition commanded by Bougainville (1766-1769), settled for 
five years in Mauritius, during the governorship of M. Poivre, who 
founded the Botanic G-arden at Pamplemousses, and attempted un- 
successfully to make Mauritius a great centre of nutmeg- and clove- 
cultivation. Commerson visited both Madagascar and Bourbon, and 
took back with him to Prance as the result of his whole expedition a 
herbarium of 3000 numbers. His collections were never regularly 
reported upon in systematic order, but were distributed to various 
herbaria, and a large number of his plants were described in the 
general works published at the end of the 18th and the beginning of 
the 19th century, especially the ‘ Encyclopedic * of Lamarck and 
Poiret, and the ‘ Species Plantarum ’ of Willdenow, and he may be 
fairly considered to be the father of Mauritian botany. 
