BOTANICAL OBSERVATIONS

ON

SELECT INDIAN PLANTS.

BY THE LATE PRESIDENT.

my names of plants displease you,' says the great Swedish botanist, choose others more agreeable to your taste;' and, by this candour, he has disarmed 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 Asiatic regions and cities, rivers and mountains; leaving friends, or persons of eminence, to preserve their own names by their own merit, and inventing new ones, from distinguishing marks and properties for such objects only as, being recently discovered, could have had no previous denomination. Far am I from doubting the great importance of perfect botanical descriptions; for languages expire as nations decay, and the true sense of many appellatives, in every dead language, must be lost in a course of ages; but, as long as those apt

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pellatives remain understood, a travelling physician, who should wish to procure an Arabian or Indian plant, and, without asking for it by its learned or vulgar name, should hunt for it in the woods by its botanical character, would resemble a geographer, who, desiring to find his way in a foreign city or province, should never inquire, by name, for a street or a town, but wait with his tables and instruments, for a proper occasion to determine its longitude and latitude.

The plants described in the following paper by their classical appellations, with their synonyma, or epithets, and their names in the vulgar dialects, have been selected for their novelty, beauty, poetical fame, reputed use in medicine, or supposed holiness; and frequent allusions to them all will be found, if the Sanscrit language should ever be generally studied, in the popular and sacred poems of the ancient Hindus, in their medical books and lawtracts, and even in the Védas themselves. Though, unhappily I cannot profess, with the fortunate Swede to have seen without glasses all the parts of the flowers which I have described, yet you may be assured that I have mentioned no part of them which I have not again and again examined with my own eyes: and though the weakness of my sight will for ever prevent my becoming a botanist, yet I have in some little degree atoned for that fatal defect by extreme attention, and by an ardent zeal for the most lovely and fascinating branch of natural knowledge.

Before I was acquainted with the method pursued. by Van Rheede, necessity had obliged me to follow a similar plan on a smaller scale; and, as his mode of studying botany, in a country and climate by no means favourable to botanical excursions, may be adopted more successfully by those who have more leisure than

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I shall ever enjoy, I present you with an interesting passage from one of his prefaces, to which I should barely have referred you, if his great work were not unfortunately confined, from its rarity, to very few hands. He informs us, in an introduction to his third volume, "that several Indian physicians and Brahmins had "composed, by his order, a catalogue of the most "celebrated plants, which they distributed according to their times of blossoming and seeding, to the configuration of their leaves, and to the forms of "their flowers and fruit; that, at the proper seasons, 66 he gave copies of the list to several intelligent men, of whom he sent parties into different forests, "with instructions to bring him, from all quarters, such "plants as they saw named, with their fruit, flowers, " and leaves, even though they should be obliged to "climb the most lofty trees for them; that three or "four painters, who lived in his family, constantly "and accurately delineated the fresh plants, of which, "in his presence, a full description was added; that, "in the mean while, he had earnestly requested all "the princes and chiefs on the Malabar coast to send "him such vegetables as were most distinguished for 66 use or for elegance; and that not one of them "failed to supply his garden with flowers, which "he sometimes received from the distance of fifty or sixty leagues; that when his herbalists had collected a sufficient number of plants, when his draughtsmen " had sketched their figures, and his native botan"ists had subjoined their description, he submitted "the drawings to a little academy of Pandits, whom "he used to convene for that purpose from different parts of the country; that his assembly often con66 sisted of fifteen or sixteen learned natives, who vied "with each other in giving correct answers to all his questions concerning the names and virtues of the principal vegetables; and that he wrote all their an"swers in his note-book; that he was infinitely de

lighted with the candid, modest, amicable, and re"spectful debates of those pagan philosophers, each "of whom adduced passages from ancient books in support of his own opinion, but without any bitter"ness of contest or the least perturbation of mind; "that the texts which they cited, were in verse, and "taken from books, as they positively asserted, more "than four thousand years old: that the first couplet "of each section in those books comprised the synonymous terms for the plant, which was the subject "of it; and that, in the subsequent verses, there

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was an ample account of its kind or species, its "properties, accidents, qualities, figure, parts, "place of growth, time of flowering and bearing "fruit, medical virtues, and more general uses; "that they quoted those texts by memory, having gotten them by heart in their earliest youth, rather "as a play than a study, according to the immemorial usage of such Indian tribes as are destined by law to the learned professions; and on that singular "law of tribes, peculiar to the old Egyptians and In"dians, he adds many solid and pertinent remarks.” Now when we complain, and myself as much as any, that we have no leisure in India for literary and philosophical pursuits, we should consider that Van Rheede was a nobleman, at the head of an Indian government, in his time very considerable, and that he fully discharged all the duties of his important station, while he found leisure to compile, in the manner just described, those twelve large volumes which Linnæus himself pronounces accurate.

1. Táraca: Vulg. Thrac.

Linn. Amomum.

Cal. Perianth spathe-like, but sitting on the germ; tubular, one-leaved, broken at the mouth into a few