MR. J. a. BAKEE O^ LILIACK^. 351 



be investigated satisfactorily with dried specimens. Unfortu- 

 nately for the object of this paper, these plants, after having 

 been once the fashion, have now gone out of fashion as general 

 objects of cultivation, and at the present time have given place to 

 Orchids and showy bedding-plants. In consequence of this state 

 of things I am afraid that a large proportion, especially of 

 smaller Cape species, which have been introduced into Euro- 

 pean gardens, have been entirely, and some, I fear, irrevocably 

 lost in a living state. On the other side of the account, we may 

 congratulate ourselves that good figures (though often without 

 dissections) of most of the species that have been cultivated are 

 preserv^ed in the ' Botanical Magazine,* the ' Botanical Eegister,' 

 Sweet's * riower (xarden," and the magnificent plates of Jacquin ; 

 and it is to be noted also that what has just been said about dried 

 specimens, and the differences which characterize species, fortu- 

 nately does not apply, or applies much less forcibly, to those 

 structural differences which characterize genera and subgenera. 

 For living specimens I have used for this paper almost solely 

 the collection at Kew and that of Mr. Wilson Saunders. Of 

 the Liliaceae contained in the latter, a selection of figures of 

 some of the most interesting is contained in the number of the 

 ' Befugium Botanicum ' which is now ready to appear, which is 

 devoted entirely to the order, and contains plates and descrip- 

 tions of eighteen new species, several of which are of great hor- 

 ticultural interest ; and, I believe, there are very few species now 

 in cultivation in the country which these two collections do not 

 contain. For dried specimens, I have relied mainly upon the 

 three sets now amalgamated at Kew — those of Sir W. Hooker, 

 Mr. Bentham, and M. Gay. The latter contains a very fine 

 series of specimens of the European genera, especially of Allium^ 

 but little that is extra-European. I have consulted, when ne- 

 cessary, the herbaria of Linnseus and Sir J. E. Smith ; but neither 

 of them contains much affecting that part of the order which is 

 here dealt with. There is a fine series of the older-known 

 species (many of the specimens dried from Kew in the days of 

 Aiton and Solander) at the British Museum, including several I 

 have not elsewhere seen ; and I wish to express my best thanks 

 to Dr. Perceval Wright and the Trustees of the Herbarium of 

 Trinity College, Dublin, for their courtesy in allowing me the 

 loan, for leisurely examination and comparison with the Kew 

 specimens, of the set of Cape Liliaceae there gathered together 



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