ainin QNUM 
PROF. T. H. HUXLEY ON THE GENTIANS. 101 
The Gentians : tes and Queries. 
By T. H. Hux®ry, F.R.S., F.L.S. 
[Read 7th April, 1887.] 
(Prare II.) 
I HAPPENED to spend some six weeks, from the end of July to the 
beginning of September 1886, at Arolla (a locality situated at 
the head of one of the southern offshoots of the valley of he 
Rhone near Sion), 6400 feet above the level of the sea. During 
my wanderings about the woods and pastures which clothe the 
sides of the valley from this level to the snow-line, a couple of 
thousand feet higher, my attention was attracted by the charac- 
teristically alpine vegetation, and more especially by the Gen- 
tians, of which some species, such as Gentiana purpurea and 
G. egmpestris, were very abundant. G. verna and G. acaulis 
were also by no means uncommon; but the latter had almost 
ceased to flower. 
It is well-nigh forty years since I occupied myself with syste- 
matic botany ; and I had no works of reference at hand except 
Gremli's ‘Flore analytique, which I happened to have bought 
at Lausanne, and Rapin's ‘ Guide des Botanistes dans le Canton 
de Vaud,’ which a fellow-traveller was kind enough to lend me. 
But the extraordinary amount of variation which presented 
itself when I compared considerable suites of specimens with the 
diagnoses and descriptions in these works struck me so much 
that, all *unanointed and unannealed" as I was in systematic 
work, I was tempted to see what I could make out of the facts 
for myself. In truth, the Gentians took hold of me rather than 
I of them ; and I have been more or less their bondservant ever 
since. Beginning with Gentiana purpurea, I found that I could not 
understand that form without knowing something about the rest 
of the species of Gentiana ; and, by a parity of reasoning, a know- 
ledge of Gentiana involved that of the other genera of the Gen- 
tianex. So that, since my return to England, I have been led to 
make a rapid survey of the whole Order; and it is the broad 
results of that survey that I wish to lay before the Linnean 
Society. 
I have to thank the Director of Kew Gardens for the free use 
of the splendid herbarium under his charge. It affords the means 
of earryirig out the investigation I have attempted much more 
thoroughly ; and I am well aware of the incompleteness of the 
LINN. JOURN.—BOTANY, VOL. XXIV. K 
