INDIAN SPECIES OF UTBICULARIA. | 171 
suites of specimens which have been placed in my hands illustra- 
tive of each or of most of the species. I have thus been enabled 
to dissect and compare numerous examples, and have been spared 
the contracted views of their specifie limitation, which, with less 
ample material, I should surely have adopted. The chief diffi- 
eulties in their study I have found to arise from the extreme 
brevity and insufficiency of the older descriptions, and the multi- 
plication of ‘book species,’ founded upon the unwarrantable data 
afforded by solitary or very imperfect specimens. The examina- 
tion of the parts of the flower in the Utricularias, also, is а labour 
absorbing much time, from the care required in their dissection, 
resulting less from any structural complication than from the 
marked tenuity of the corolla, —while the frequent variability, even 
in the ваше species, in the form of parts upon which important 
characters are often based, demands an attentive comparison of 
examples. The settlement ofthe synonymy of several species, and 
the reduction of those specific names which have been applied 
either to individual varieties or to mere forms, has been, I hope, 
not an unuseful result of their study. 
The more important recent contributions to our knowledge of 
these plants are the papers of Benjamin, in the * Botanische Zeit- 
ung’ and the * Linnea;' of Edgeworth in the ‘ Proceedings of the 
Linnean Society ; of Dalzell in the * Kew Journal of Botany ;’ and 
the figures and descriptions in the * Icones Plantarum Indis» Ori- 
entalis’ of Dr. Wight. With regard to the descriptions of the 
first-named author (although generally drawn up with care, yet 
founded too often upon very imperfect and incomplete examples), 
I should have felt them particularly embarrassing, were it not that, 
in the herbarium of Sir W. J. Hooker, I have had access to speci- 
mens of many of them authentieated by his own labels. The 
contribution of M. P. Edgeworth, contained in the first volume of 
our old ‘ Proceedings, I should have most certainly overlooked, 
had not J. J. Bennett kindly called my attention to it. Its most 
important feature is the description of a supposed new genus of 
Lentibularie, under the name of Diurospermum, from the Western 
Himalaya. It would appear that no specimens of this plant have 
been sent over by the author of this paper ; at least, in the herbaria 
to which I have referred, none are to be found ; but I feel tolerably 
confident that his plant may be recognized in a small and very 
interesting species collected in Kumaon by Strachey and Win- 
terbottom. I account for one or two little discrepancies by the 
assumption that Edgeworth’s specimens have been either few or 
