First Book of Indian Botany

Abstract

THE want of special works introductory to the study of the botany of the principal tropical and southern countries of the globe has long been felt. The medical man, the student, and the amateur resident or travelling in India and our principal colonies, find it hard work to keep up or get up their botany by introductions and class-books founded on British plants, whilst the schoolmaster would find himself very much abroad who should attempt to teach his pupils Australian Botany by Henfrey's or Balfour's Introductions, or by Oliver's Elements. Hence the need of a series of works devoted to the teaching of botany with a special reference to the wants of the sojourners in foreign parts, and illustrated by the common plants to be found therein. With the exception of the admirable text-books of American Botany, of Asa Gray, we know of no work of the nature indicated, illustrative of any extra-European Flora. There was, indeed, some talk a few years ago of a series of such works, embracing all departments of Natural History, being authorised by the local governments of India,—but nothing has come from that quarter: and much as we then regretted the supineness of the Indian authorities in the matter, we no longer do so; for India could assuredly never have produced a work of so high an order as that whose title stands at the head of this notice, for a better considered and better executed work of the kind it has never been our good fortune to meet with, and it at once places its author first in the rank of English writers of Botanical Class-books. First Book of Indian Botany. By Daniel Oliver, Keeper of the Herbarium and Library of the Royal Gardens, Kew, and Professor of Botany in University College, London. With numerous Illustrations. Small 8vo. pp. xii. and 394. (London: Macmillan and Co. 1869.)