The First Edition of this Catalogue, Published eleven years ago, has in the second Edition now offered to the public been largely' augmented in genera, species, and descriptive .detail. Though not exhaustive of ornamental exotics in cultivation, or of weeds in the field, a catalogue may in other respects be considered tolerably complete up to date. It contains '3,222 named species and varieties against 2,020 published in the original list of 1880. The work maintains its former character generally, and with the additional indexes appended, it is hoped that those who are not conversant with scientific terms,may.be able to discover a fair pro- portion of the proper names of plants ; and hence a knowledge of their affinities and uses, as described by many authors. To facilitate the -determination of local species, nearly 800 Kanarese names have been entered, and type specimens of Natural Orders have mostly been preferred from plants with vemaicular apppllations. Many of these local, names are published for the first time, and as the subject is one of some obscurity, the Compiler trusts that errors will be leniently dealt with. The credit attaching to ,the vernacular work falls to Siddapur Davannah, the plant collector who reported the greater part of the names, and to M. Krishnaswamy Chetty, the writer who revised and tabulated the same.
The diagnostic characters attached to each Natural Order, and other abridged details, such as the approximate color of the flower catalog, are only intended to guide the student to a fuller description in standard works of Systematic Botany. Of the latter. Sir Joseph Hooker's great work " The Flora of British India " will, when completed, be the standard text.