Page:Madras Journal of Literature and Science, series 1, volume 6 (1837).djvu/499

1837.] some degree, this defect, which even the most carefully drawn characters, cannot always avoid, owing to the inadequacy of language to find terms sufficiently precise for the designation of the innumerable forms which the vegetable kingdom presents, and especially for distinguishing the varying forms which the same plant, when produced under circumstances tending to increase or diminish its luxuriance, is apt to exhibit.

The insufficiency of language alone, to convey just ideas of the forms of natural objects, has led naturalists, ever since the invention of engraving, to have recourse to pictorial delineation, to assist the mind through the medium of the senses; and, prior to the time of Linæeus, not without good cause, since nothing could be more vague than the language then employed in description. Impelled by this cause, the number of figures some of the older writers published, is truly astonishing. The precision of modern scientific language, the generalization of the innumerable objects of natural history into classes, orders, tribes, and families, and the accuracy and minute details which the representations of recent artists present, have fortunately all combined to diminish the necessity for the innumerable figures of the older naturalists, the latter cause having increased their cost so greatly, as materially to diminish their production, even to the extent required for the elucidation of the rapid advances natural history is now making.

The vegetable treasures of India have undoubtedly been highly honoured by the magnificence of the works dedicated to their illustration, as those of Rheede, Roxburgh, and Wallich, amply testify; but, unhappily for science, the first is very rare, and they are all so costly, that few can afford to purchase them, while, from their size, they can only be conveniently consulted in the library. In spite, however, of these drawbacks to their more general use, they have been of immense service to Indian Botany, and are alike honourable to their authors and to the countries which produced them, while the value of the last is vastly enhanced, by several very admirable memoirs on different natural orders by some of the most distinguished living botanists.

The work which I am preparing to enter upon, is of a humbler, but I hope not less useful, description; its object being to furnish, at the cheapest possible rate, a series of accurate figures of plants, with copious analysis of the parts of fructification, so as, in the words of a highly talented correspondent (the author of the tabular view of the generic characters of Roxburgh's Flora Indica), to supply the Indian botanical amateur with the 'one thing needful' towards acquiring a correct knowledge of the principles of the natural method of classification, by presenting him with a series of diagrams, if I may so call