BOTANICAL OBSERVATIONS

ON

SELECT INDIAN PLANTS*.

BY THE PRESIDENT.

'IF my names of plants displease you, says the great Swedish botanist,

⚫ choose others more agreeable to your taste,' and, by this candour, he has difarmed all the criticism, to which as it must be allowed, even the critical parts of his admirable works lie continually open: I avail myself of his indulgence, and am very solicitous to give Indian plants their true Indian appellations; because I am fully persuaded, that LINNÆUS himself would have adopted them, had he known the learned and ancient language of this country; as he, like all other men, would have retained the native names of Afiatick regions and cities, rivers and mountains, leaving friends or perfons of eminence to preserve their own names by their own merit, and inventing new ones, from distinguishing marks and properties, for fuch objects only as, being recently discovered, could have had no previous denomination. Far am I from doubting the

* This paper was announced in the specimen of an Afiatick Common-place Book, which the Prefident added, in the third volume of thefe Tranfactions, to Mr. HARINGTON's propofal for an im provement of LOCKE's useful plan.

great

great importance of perfect botanical defcriptions; for languages expire as nations decay, and the true fenfe of many appellatives in every dead language must be loft in a course of ages: but, as long as thofe appellatives remain understood, a travelling phyfician, who should wish to procure an Arabian or Indian plant, and, without asking for it by its learned or vulgar name, fhould hunt for it in the woods by its botanical character, would resemble a geographer, who, defiring to find his way in a foreign city or province, fhould never inquire by name for a street or a town, but wait with his tables and inftruments, for a proper occa→ fion to determine its longitude and latitude.

The plants, described in the following paper by their claffical appellations, with their fynonyma or epithets, and their names in the vulgar dialects, have been selected for their novelty, beauty, poetical fame, reputed use in medicine, or fuppofed holiness; and frequent allufions to them all will be found, if the Sanferit language fhould ever be generally studied, in the popular and facred poems of the ancient Hindus, in their medical books and lawtracts, and even in the Védas themfelves: though unhappily I cannot profefs, with the fortunate Swede, to have feen without glaffes all the parts of the flowers, which I have described, yet you be affured, that I have mentioned no part of them, which I have not again and again examined with my own eyes; and though the weaknefs of my fight will for ever prevent my becoming a botanist, yet I have in fome little degree atoned for that fatal defect by extreme attention, and by an ardent zeal for the moft lovely and fascinating branch of natural knowledge.

may

Before I was acquainted with the method pursued by VAN RHEEDE, neceffity had obliged me to follow a fimilar plan on a smaller scale; and, as his mode of ftudying botany, in a country and climate by no means favourable to botanical excurfions, may be adopted more fuc

cessfully