Page:The Flora of British India Vol 1.djvu/12

vi museums; and yet of which so little of the Natural History, and especially the Botany, has been systematically brought together. Under these circumstances an exhaustive Flora would be a work of many years and many volumes; and it is as a hand-book to what is already known, and a pioneer to more complete works, that the present is put forward.

For an account of the materials upon which it is founded, the reader is referred to the Introductory Essay to the Flora Indica alluded to above, which contains a history of Indian Botany up to 1855, together with an essay on the climates and physical features of India, and on its divisions into Botanico-Geographical provinces. Since the date of its publication, no great systematically arranged collections of Indian plants, such as those of Wallich, Wig-ht, Stocks, Strachey, and Winterbottom, &c. (fee, have been added to these; though many very valuable local collections have been made ; among;st which the Malaccan Herbarium of the late Dr. Maing-ay, and the South Indian of Major Beddome, present the most novelty and interest. Since that period, too, the vast Herbaria of Griffith and Falconer have been made over to Kew by the late East Indian Government, and though in a ruinous condition from damp and vermin, have been arranged and distributed; Wight's invaluable original Herbarium has been added to that of Kew, by private gift from that veteran botanist, and its duplicates also distributed from this establishment; and Bottler's own Herbarium has been transferred fjpm the Museum of King's College, London, and liberally presented to Kew by order of the Council of that Institution. The value of these last two collections, as containing the type specimens of plants described in so many old and modern works, cannot be over-estimated.

The plan approved by his Grace the Secretary of State for India, for bringing out this Flora, viz., of associating with myself a number of competent botanists, whose names will appear in the headings of the pages they (wholly or in part) shall contribute, will, it is hoped, enable me to bring it out with reasonable celerity; whilst the adoption of as concise a style and phraseology as is consistent with clearness, and the