PREFACE.
The propriety of quoting the vernacular names of plants, lias been questioned by several Indian Botanists and by none in more condemnatory terms than by Dr. Wight.* The objections urged, are the uncertainty and fluctuating character of local terms, the mistakes made by persons ignorant of the language of the country in assuming the answers of Natives to be names which were no names, the number of diverse names given to the same plant, the mischief which might be occasioned by such misapprehensions, &c. But it cannot be denied that many of the commonest and most useful plants are known by definite and
- Prodi: pref. p. xxiii. After stating that he discards all native names in concurrence with the opinions expressed by Wallich and Carey in their edition of the Flora Indica, he adds that " the natives seem to have no rule either for nomenclature or " orthography ; they have no means of producing an uniformity of names, and very " frequently confound one name with another, so that our inserting these would " only tend to mislead, in place of proving an aid in the investigation of an unknown « plant, by one unacquainted with botany. Owing to very different plants having the " same native name, we have occasionally known dangerous mistakes originated, by " erroneously substituting active medicines, when those of an opposite kind were in" tended, and vice versa. On these last grounds particularly, we not only think it *'useless but injurious, nay even dangerous, to insert those names, unless the na" tives themselves shall have discovered some method by which a plant shall be " known through-iut by but one name, and that name shall be restricted to the in" dividuel plant."
But Wallich simply states that the names given to plants by natives of Nipal are in general very uncertain and fluctuating and that he only uses them when he has reason to be tolerably satisfied as to their correctness, and accordingly he docs iiisert
