MR. G. BENTHAM ON GRAMINEX. 15 
meadows and pastures, on ornamental grasses, on the physiology 
and properties of the Order, &c., to which I need not further 
allude, my present odject being merely to consider Graminer with 
reference to their classification and affinities. In a systematic 
point of view, the great mistake of Linneus and the earlier syste- 
matists was the attempt to regard the whole spikelet as a single 
flower, with a calyx and corolla to be cempared with those of the 
more perfect Monocotyledons. Robert Browa, with his usual 
sagacity, pointed out this and other errors, and first laid down 
the true principles upon which the Order could best be divided into 
tribes and genera; but he unfortunately took up the idea that 
the so-called lower and upper pale: represented three outer seg- 
ments of a perianth ; and although this theory has long since been 
proved to be groundless, especially by Hugo Mohl, whose views 
have been fully confirmed by all subsequent careful observers, 
yet so great is the authority so deservedly attached to every 
thing that has issued from the pen of Brown, that his explana- 
tion of the structure of the spikelet is still allowed to influence 
the terminology adopted in generic and specific descriptions. 
Shortly after the publication of Brown's ‘Prodromus, Gra- 
mine» were taken up by several French botanists who had 
acquired materials, rich for the time, chiefly from North America 
and the West Indies. Some of these had already been published 
by Michaux or by Persoon, with more or less of assistance from 
Louis Claude Richard, to whom the credit of all that is good in 
Persoon’s ‘Synopsis’ as well as in Michaux's ‘ Flora’ has been 
attributed by several subsequent writers. The greatest value is 
justly attached to all of the elder Richard’s observations in every 
Order that he worked up; and there is no doubt that such assist- 
ance as he gave to thöse two works added much to their import- 
ance; but we know that he declined to attach his name to Persoon’s 
Synopsis, chiefly from an unwillingness to sanction the arrange- 
ment under the Linnean system, and we are by no means assured 
that there may not have been other details in both works which 
he did not concur in. We therefore are not justified in fixing on 
him a responsibility which he refused to undertake; and the 
genera and species first published by Michaux or by Persoon 
should be quoted as theirs and not Richard’s, except where 
Richard’s name is expressly attached to them. Michaux’s ‘ Flora’ 
was published in 1803, the first volume of Persoon’s ‘ Synopsis’ 
in 1805, both of them therefore antecedent to Brown; but two 
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