MR. G, BENTHAM ON GRAMINEZ, 19 
culation, and were overlooked by Beauvois, Persoon, Willdenow, 
and other general systematists. Several of the same genera 
have since been reestablished, but under other names which have 
now been so long and so universally adopted, that they must be 
considered as having acquired a right of preseription to overrule 
the striet laws of priority. It would indeed be mere pedantry, 
highly inconvenient to botanists, and so far detrimental to science, 
now to substitute Blumenbachia for Sorghum, Fibichia for Cyno- 
don, Santia for Polypogon, or Singlingia for Triodia. Since the 
days of Kunth, Trinius, and Nees, the most important local re- 
visions of Gramine& are: Andersson’s * Gramineæ Scandinavie,’ 
Parlatore’s first volume of his ‘ Flora Italiana,’ Cosson and 
Durieu's Glumaceous volume of the great unfinished ‘Flore 
d'Algérie Doell’s Graminee for the great Brazilian Flora 
founded by Martius, and Fournier's Graminez for the Mexican 
Flora he has undertaken; besides more partial revisions by 
Grisebach in his ‘Spicilegium Flore Rumelice et Bithynice,’ in the 
fourth volume of Ledebour’s ‘ Flora Rossica,’ and in various con- 
tributions to the Floras of extratropical South America, the West 
Indies, the Himalayas, &c., and by Emile Desvaux in Claude 
Gay’s ‘Chilian Flora,’ supplemented by new genera and species 
published by Philippi in various papers on Chilian plants. 
Andersson was a most acute observer, and had studied well the 
northern grasses of the old world; but from want of access to 
a sufficiently extensive library, his synonyms, especially when 
treating of extra-Scandinavian species, are often very inaccurate. 
Parlatore’s detailed monograph of Italian grasses is thoroughly 
to be relied upon when the result of his own observations; but 
unfortunately neither he nor Andersson sufficiently distinguished 
the characters they had taken from other works from those they 
had themselves verified. Old errors, for instance, in the de- 
scriptions of the style or of the ripe fruit, which it is often very 
difficult to ascertain from dried specimens, have been in several 
instances repeated by both authors, sometimes in identical terms. 
Both of them also, especially Andersson, show a great tendency to 
the multiplication of genera and species. Cosson and Durieu's 
‘Monograph of Algerian Grasses,’ comprising the chief portion 
of those of the rich West-Mediterranean Flora, is a most valuable 
treatise, both for methodical arrangement and specific distine- 
tions. Grisebach has also done much for the elucidation of oriental 
Graminee, In Doell’s work I have been disappointed. In many 
