But even as regards scientific purposes, other botanists are found to view the subject in a very different light from Dr. Wight.
Dr. Royle, in his observations on the Provincial Exhibitions of the Madras Presidency, expressly recommends that native names should be introduced into the proposed botanical Manual, for Southern India.*
" 1 have always found," he observes, " that such (plants) as are of " use and are therefore important, have names by which they are well " known to the Natives. These names no doubt differ in different dis" tricts and applying them may be more troublesome in the Madras Pre" sidency than elsewhere, from the languages differing so much in dif" ferent parts, but this very fact makes the task more necessary."
The opinion of William Griffith, eminent among the many eminent botanists of India, also deserves to be cited. In a letter to Mr. Marshman written shortly before his death, he enumerates the merits of Voigt's catalogue, among which he particularizes that " it gives in all definable cases, the vernacular names, and these appear to have been obtained with no common care and consequently to lose in a great measure, the usual inapplicability."
One great source of confusion is found in the absence of a recognised standard for representing native sounds in an English dress. The same word is spelt in as many forms as there are writers, each according to his individual conception of the sound uttered by the speaker, so that the recorded results can hardly be recognised as applying to the same thing.
The persons moreover from whom such information is derived,
knewe full^ well, by experience in sundrye other partes, to bee wholesomme, (many of our crewe lyinge sicke at this tyme,) or savorye, or usefulle to trafficke withall. Nexte, tbatt when anye were shewne us, we coulde in noewise tell, from ~ names given toe them by | Gentooes, whether or noe - like were already knowne in Europpean countryes : And yelt these partes doe myghtylie abounde with herbes and woodes of sovraigne virtew."—Masler Richarde Kynge, his ira veils, and voyages, and Iraffickes, in foraygne countryes, in the Shippe Tambarían. Lond. MSS.fol. 1634.—Title lo P id. Ind.
- In conformity with Dr. Royle's advice such a manual has already been undertaken and is now in course of preparation by Mr. Cleghorn, the late Professor of botany.— Had. Jour. Lit. and Sc. V. II. N. 5. p. 78.
