A TRIBE OF LEGUMINOSAE. : 19 
others in the middle,—all characters closely connecting them with 
the woody Galegee. The majority of species are tall, woody 
climbers, with a very few arborescent ones ; all have alternate pin- 
nate leaves with opposite leaflets (reduced only in the case of the 
Lonchocarpus unifoliolatus to a single terminal leaflet), and purple- 
reddish, white or very pale straw-coloured flowers, never really 
yellow. There is indeed so much conformity in the structure of 
their flowers and in the general plan of their pods, that I should 
haye had no hesitation in uniting them all into one large genus 
divided artificially into sections, were it not for the inconvenience, 
already alluded to, of suppressing long-established and universally 
recognized genera, when they can be marked out by a tolerably 
positive character, however artificial and isolated that character 
may be. 
‘This delimitation, and even the precise separation of the whole 
group from the Galegec, is, however, in this instance, attended wih 
considerable difficulty. Out of rather more than eighty evidently 
distinct species, there are still about twenty in which the pod is 
entirely unknown, and several more in which it has been seen only 
In а half-grown state, and much remains to be learnt with regard 
to. a great part of the group. Originally, the few species known 
to earlier botanists were mostly referred to Robinia, which became 
a: general receptacle for Papilionaceous trees with united stamens 
and a flat pod, whilst the climbers were inserted promiscuously 
Into Robinia or Dalbergia. When these old groups were broken 
up, the American species were generally referred to Lonchocarpus, 
and the Asiatic ones distributed under Pongamia and Dalbergia. In 
my. Vienna memoir I proposed no alterations in this respect, for 
. the American Lonchocarpi had been usually referred to Galegee, 
a tribe which I had not then time to work up, and I had scarcely 
any materials for the Asiatic genera. Nor did Vogel publish any 
revision of the few Brazilian species, and to the present day Lon- 
chocarpus remains in a state of utter confusion, not a little in- 
creased by the creation of detached genera founded upon supposed 
discrepancies in the form of the pod, without any attempt at investi- 
gating what should be considered as the limits of variation of that 
organ in the true Lonchocarpi. The Asiatic species were partially 
Worked up by Wight and Arnott with that care which characterized 
the whole of their Peninsular ‘ Prodromus.’ . They judiciously di- 
stinguished the Brachypterums from the true Dalbergias, and their 
Rew genus Millettia from Pongamia. Since then, I sketched. out, 
Ш ацоќе to the ‘ Plante? Junghubniane,’ the principal вее sug- 
c 
