86 MR. G. BENTHAM ON GRAMINES. 
Munro, though he had so nearly completed his descriptions of 
species, and often indicated the sections to which he referred 
them, had not yet definitively grouped them, leaving his manu- 
scripts, for convenience of reference, in alphabetical order. We 
have adopted three sections, founded on Nees's, which appear to us 
well defined by positive characters— Zupaspalum, Cabrera, and 
Anastrophus, subdividing the first, and largest, into four groups 
or subsections, Anachyris, Opisthion, Pseudoceresia, and Ceresia, 
much less marked in their outlines, but generally speaking fairly 
natural. 
Eupaspalum comprises the great majority of the species, and is 
distinguished by the spikelets strictly secund along the rhachis of 
the spikes, with the back of the flowering glume and of the lower 
empty one (when present) turned outwards—that is, away from 
the rhachis or from its midrib ; whilst in Anastrophus, which in- 
cludes the remainder of the genus except the monotypie Cabrera, 
the spikelets are almost distichous, and the back of the flowering 
glume and of the lower empty one turned towards the midrib of 
the rhachis. This distinetion was specially relied upon by Nees 
under the terms spicule adverse and spicule inverse, and followed 
up by Doell. It is not alluded to by Fournier with regard to the 
Mexican Paspala ; but, if I understand correctly his words (Gram. 
Mex. p. vii), it nearly corresponds to the character he proposes 
for the primary division of Grammes. 
Anachyris, the first subsection of Eupaspalum, is a purely arti- 
ficial one, characterized solely by the having only a single empty 
glume below the flowering one. It was first proposed as a genus 
by Nees for the Paspalum malacophyllum, Trin., which has all the 
habit and floral and other characters of Paspalum except this 
single one; and Fournier, apparently on this account, transfers 
it to the tribe Oryzee. Doell, however, reduces it to a section 
of Paspalum under the name of Eremachyrion, associating with it 
a few other species, some of them evidently more nearly allied to 
corresponding species of the section Opisthion than to each other. 
And even the technical character is not always constant; for in 
P. (Eremachyrion) sesquiglume, Doell, a species closely allied to 
P. (Opisthion) maritimum, Trin., I frequently find a minute outer 
glume; and, again, P. pallidum and P. candidum, H. B. K., both 
of which Doell places in Eremachyrion, are scarcely to be distin- 
guished from each other except by the lowest empty glume absent 
in the one, present in the other, as originally pointed out by 
