Flora indica, or, Descriptions of Indian plants : reprinted literatim from Carey's edition of 1832 / by the late William Roxborough.

  • Roxburgh, William, 1751-1815.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Flora indica, or, Descriptions of Indian plants : reprinted literatim from Carey's edition of 1832 / by the late William Roxborough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE TO THE REPRINT, 1874. By C. B. Clarke. Trf. present selling price of Roxburgh’s Flora Indica (Carey’s Edition) in London is £ 5, and of Piddington’s Index is £ 1. The present reprint is priced 10*’.: and this is a sufficient reason for the undertaking of the reprint. The Flora Indica of Roxburgh is still the only Hand-book of the plants of India that we have: and the study of Indian Botany has been for years barred, both for students of the Medical College and for all English denizens who do not happen to have come to India well acquainted with a large number of the tropical Asiatic genera, by the impracticability of obtaining a copy of the only book that can help them. During my sojourn in India, scores of persons must have consulted me how to get some acquaintance with the numerous and striking plants around them : and to all I have been obliged to give one answer, viz., that there is but one book, and that unattainable. The Flora Indica of Roxburgh has been quoted so largely and widely in botanic literature that a copy is essential to every botanic library, and by the multiplication of such libraries the price of the few copies of Roxburgh floating in the market is being steadily pushed up. In order that the present reprint may completely supply to professional botanists the place of the scarce original, the reprint has been made a verbatim and literal one ; all the errors of the original having been faithfully retained; even the genus Loranthus is printed twice over, as Carey printed it twice. For the last reading of the proofs of the reprint before the press I am indebted to my friend H. H. Locke, Esq., whose name will be a sufficient guarantee (to all who know his work) of the careful accuracy of the reprint. The paging of Carey’s edition is added in the margin so that the references to the original Roxburgh can be immediately found in the reprint without referring to the Index. The publication of Roxburgh’s manuscript Flora Indica was commenced by Carey and Walhch. The first volume containing the orders (in the Lmmean succession) up to the end of Tetrandria was published in 1820, and is -nevesa- Roxburgh’s work, the remarks by Wallich himself being trifling. The second volume of Wallich’s Edition published in 1824 is iu form a continuation of tho first, containing about two-tliirds of Pentandria: but it really proceeds on an entirely different scale. It contains, indeed, the Roxburgh manuscript, but there are added crowds of species by Wallich from Nepal, &c., widening the area of the work altogether. Iu short, the area was so greatly widened, that Wallich never was able to get on any further with the publication. Wallich’s Edition of Roxburgh having thus come to a stop, Dr. Carey at the request of Roxburgh’s friends published in 1832, in three volumes, Roxburgh’s manuscript Flora Indica as he left it: the first portion, up to Tetrandria inclusive, coincides therefore with Wallich’s first volume, and the remainder is homogeneous with this first portion, and represents Roxburgh’s complete Botanical work in Iudia, except the Cryptogams. In the present reprint I have therefore taken no notice of Wallich’s second volume, which is on a different scale, contains much that is not Roxburgh’s, and is now not scarce or dear in the market; I have printed Roxburgh’s own manuscript as it stands in Carey's edition, ami have added Roxburgh’s Crypto- gams from the Calcutta Journal of Natural History. Griffith's editing of the Cryptogams of Roxburgh, unfortunately, contains internal evidence that it was