SUPPLEMENT 
TO THE 
JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
Synopsis of Dalbergiec, a фо of Leguminose. By GEORGE 
ВЕхтнд%г, Esq., V.P.L.S. 
[Read June 2, 1859.] 
Waen, in the winter of 1836-37, at Vienna, І worked up the South 
American Dalbergiee from such materials as I there found, I was 
induced toadopt to their fullestextent the prevailing ideas of the im- 
portance of the modifications of the fruit in the limitation of genera ; 
for their evident constancy in the comparatively few species in which 
I could examine the flowers also, appeared to justify the great 
value attached to the characters derived from them. Since then, 
however, the great accession of specimens I have had at my dis- 
posal from the warmer regions of Asia, Africa, and America, where 
the trees and woody climbers constituting this tribe are equally 
abundant, has induced me considerably to modify my former opi- 
nions, and led me to what I conceive to be a fairer appreciation of 
the true value of these characters. As 1 have already had occasion 
to remark in my paper on Clitoria, read before the Society in 1857, 
the greater or less degree of development in different parts of the 
Pod or its appendages, acquired during growth and maturation, 
Which often makes a great difference in its external appearance, is 
of very little systematic value; whilst a tendency to development 
mM one direction and not in another, or to produce appendages in 
Опе part rather than in another, often difficult to appreciate, is, on 
the contrary, remarkably constant in genera otherwise natural. 
LINN, PROC.—BOTANY, VOL. IV. SUPPLEMENT. B 
