62 



MB. J. Q. baker's STSTE\r.V TRTBACEAHUM. 



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a little over 300 with which he was acquainted ; and I admit G5 

 genera against his 30. Salisbury studied the order very carefully, 

 and in the first volume of the 'Transactions of the Horticultural 

 Society ' gave names to several genera that now stand ; but he 

 never characterized them, and his fragmentary ' Genera Planta- 

 rum,' issued a few years ago by Dr. J. E. Gray, stops short ab- 

 ruptly at the very beginning of the order. Dean Herbert made 

 a special study of Crocus^ and published a good many new species 

 and genera of Iridacese in the * Botanical Magazine ' and ' Bota- 

 nical Eegistcr/ Tor the last generation the order has been 

 neglected, and many of the less hardy Cape species which were 

 introduced in the days of Ker and Salisbury have been lost from 

 cultivation. 



The only considerable contribution to its literature during the 

 last thirty years is a series of papers by Dr. P. W. Klatt, of Ham- 

 burg, which extend from the 31st to the 35th volume of the 

 ' Liniia^a.' These, taken together, constitute a general synopsis of 

 the order. They are founded principally upon the Berlin Her- 

 barium ; and of the plants for which the author had access to 

 proper material the descriptions are full and clear. 'But he gives 

 no citation of synonyms ; so that if we want to look up the refer- 

 ences to any particular plant, these papers do not help us, and 

 we have to fall back upon Ker's w^ork of 1827. And not only has 

 Dr. Ellatt omitted many species which were known at the date 

 when he wrote, but he has left, I think, great room for improve- 

 ment in the making of a key to the genera and their general 

 arrangement and nomenclature. 



What I propose therefore to undertake now is to give, In the 

 first place, a description of the genera, referring, of course, to 

 their proper places, so far as I can judge, the numerous generic 

 synonyms which by this time have accumulated, and constructing 

 a general key to the tribes and genera upon the model of those 

 which have been found so practically useful in Benthara and 

 Hooker's ' Genera Plantarum,' and, secondly, to give under each 

 genus a synonymic list of the known species with a brief note of 

 their geographical distribution. The general plan of my paper 

 is, as I said before, to do for the order in 1876 what Ker did in 

 1827. I have added to the scope of Ker's plan only by giving the 

 preliminary key to the tribes and genera, and by including the 

 geographical element. On the other hand, I have worked upon a 





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