MR. J. O. BAKER OK ULIACEiE. 349 



A Revision of the Genera and Species of Herbaceous Capsular 

 Gamophyllous Liliaceae. By J. G. BakJer, Esq., F.L.S. &c. 



* 



[E^ad February 3, 1870.] 



I BELIEVE that I am quite safe in saying that there is now no 

 Order o^ flowering plants in whichj at any rate in proportion to 

 the inherent and necessary complication of the subject, there is 

 more difficulty and loss of time incurred in determining the 

 name of an unknown plant, than in Liliaceae. One principal 

 reason of this difficulty is that it is now twenty-seven years since 

 the last general handbook of the order, the fourth volume of the 

 * Enumeratio ' of Kunth, was written, and that, of course, during 

 those twenty-seven years a considerable number of new genera 

 and species have been published, the accounts of which are 

 scattered widely through local floras and periodicals, and have 

 never been gathered together and worked up upon a uniform 

 plan. And, for various reasons, the work just mentioned, which 

 is the only one that is at all available for use as a working hand- 

 book, is not well adapted for that purpose. It is the production 

 of a very experienced and excellent botanist ; but, even for that 

 time, he does not seem to have had in this order an extensive 

 command of material to work upon, and, in consequence, has 

 often been obliged to compile his account of genera and species 

 from his predecessors, who have not described them upon a uni- 

 form plan, or used a uniform terminology. His descriptions of 

 genera are very careful and elaborate, occupying frequently the 

 greater part of a closely printed octavo page ; but, as Dr. Lindley 

 complained when the work was published, they are scattered all 

 through the book, and no help is given to the student, either by 

 means of italics or an analytical key, towards choosing out from 

 the long array of characters those which are relied upon in each 

 particular case for furnishing the characteristic distinction of the 

 genus. When a number of closely allied genera are dealt with 

 in this way, I need scarcely point out that it requires a very 

 needless expenditure of time and trouble to settle in which an 

 unknown specimen must be placed ; and not only so, but there is 

 very great danger of an author who follows this plan making 

 for himself, or adopting from others, genera which do not possess 

 any definite generic individuality. To illustrate this last propo- 

 sition, I need not go further than the work with which we are 



LIXX. PROG. — BOTANY, VOL. XI. 2 B 



