PREFACE.
Before the completion of Sir Joseph Hooker's great book 'Flora of British India,' the only comprehensive work on Indian Botany was that of Dr. W. Roxburgh. But it was long out of print and the Revd. Dr. Carey's edition of that important work sold in London for something like £5. The late Mr. C. B. Clarke of the Educational Department of Bengal, afterwards Inspector of Schools in Assam, conferred a great boon on students of Indian Botany by bringing out a reprint of that work in 1874 and pricing it so low as 5 rupees only. Unfortunately, it is now out of print. When more than 25 years ago, I commenced the study of Indian Medicinal Plants, I had to work with this well known book. So the reference to Roxburgh throughout the present work is to the pages of that reprint.
I also experienced great difficulty in identifying the plants for not possessing illustrations of most of them. It is almost impossible for a person of moderate resources to provide himself with all the illustrated works on Indian Botany, especially as a good many of them, having become out of print, are procurable only at fabulous prices. I found that for a proper study of the subject there was a great want of a work containing illustrations, botanical descriptions, vernacular names and uses of the medicinal plants of this country. It was to supply this want to some extent that the present work was undertaken. In this undertaking I was very fortunate to have secured the co-operation of the late lamented Lieutenant-Colonel Kanhoba Ranchoddas Kirtikar, F. L. S., I. M. S., a botanist of great repute, who possessed a very rich library of Botany and other sciences allied to it. Himself a good draughtsman, he had also employed an able artist of Bombay to draw and paint from nature, plants of economic importance. The faithfulness of these drawings is admired by those who have seen them. Colonel Kirtikar very readily allowed me to publish them with this work. He also kindly undertook to prepare the botanical descriptions of the
