a. botanist must memorize the names and diagnostic characters 
of at least four thousand species of plants; Hooker was 
thinking mainly of flowering plants and ferns, and nowadays we 
must add the host of fungi, of which there are probably between 
twenty and thirty thousand species in Malaya* Names we mus/t 
have and names uniformly applied. And where there are no 
botanical names or for sundry reasons they cannot be discovered, 
# » 
we must use vernacular names. Thus it happens that Malay* 
Tamil and Chinese names acquire unwonted significance in the 
* 
East, particularly in the study of economic plants. Moreover, 
who hut botanists will trouble to remember scientific names, and. they 
-'reasonably 
only, when they cannot/ use popular ones? I hsv e forgotten 
the botanical names of the pear and the apple, the walnut, the 
* * 
cricket-bat willow and the liquorice plant, but I could look 
them up in a dictionary at the Botanical Gardens and very 
quickly discover a host of information. In Malaya, despite 
the. research which has been done, only in comparatively 
few cases will a popular name lead one to a correct identification. 
Mmt is Pak Choy? What is Keladi Pinang? What is Torong 
Pipit or Daun Kechubong? fhat is Urd Dhal or Mung? What is 
Kedeieh, Kechapi or Setul? Only too frequently we cannot 
reply unless we have a specimen to identify. I have imagined 
a great index wherein all these vernacular names are correctly 
set against their botanical equivalents, so that the answer can 
be given without even setting down the telephone-receiver. 
No?/ I do not mean to say that we have no such indexes 
to consult in Malaya for we have Watson*s book of Malayan Plant 
Names, Burkill*s Dictionary of the Economic Products of the 
Malay Peninsula, and several other smaller works of great 
value. But these works are pioneers to be enlarged and amended 
^ "V 
