34 DIt. I. B. BALFOUR Otf THE GENUS PANDANUS. 



into whose hands it may fall, and who may be so situated as to 

 have an opportunity of supplying information or material will not 

 neglect it, and will thus fonvard the completion of the mono- 

 graph. To render the list more serviceable, I have appended, in 

 addition to the synonyms and references, all the popular names ; 

 and the locality is also given for eacli species. And, further, 

 at the end of the list will be found a short note with directions as 

 to the most suitable modes of preserving specimens of the fruits 

 of Pandanus. 



I do not intend at present to say any tiling about the affinities 



of the Pandanacese, whether regarded as a family per se, or as a 



tribe of a large group ; but it may not be out of place to say a 



few words concerning the genus Panclcinas itself, as a prelude to 

 the list of species. 



Before the time of Linnreus the Screw-pines had attracted the 

 attention of many voyagers and botanists; and we find frequent 

 references to them in the older works, but under designations and 

 with descriptions which render it difficult to recognize them. The 

 earliest reference to the plants I have seen is in 'Tractado de las 

 Drogas ' of Christopher Acosta, published in 1578. On page 347 

 of this book, we find a description of a species under the designa- 

 tion Ananas Bravo ; and there is a figure, very rude, but un- 

 doubtedly intended to represent a Screw-pine. John Bauhin, in 

 1 Historia Plantarum ' p. 96, describes the same species, copying 

 the figure, but alters the name to Ananas sylveslris, and gives as 

 a synonym the Keura of the Arabians. AVe have references to 

 the same plant, usually under the name of Ananas or Carduus, in 

 the works of the various botanists who wrote towards the end of 

 the seventeenth and commencement of the eighteenth century; 

 and in 1748 Linnaeus indicates the plant, in his ' Flora Zeylanica,' 

 as Bromelia sylvesiris. In the fourth volume of the ' Herbarium 

 Ainboinense,' Eumphius in 1750 published an account,with figures, 

 of thirteen kinds of Pandang or Pandanus from the Indian Ar- 

 chipelago ; and it is to him we owe the name of Pandanus. His 

 descriptions are excedingly bad, and the figures so poor— in striking 

 contrast with those given by Eeede in the second volume of the 

 'Hortus Malabaricus' nearly a century before— that any identi- 

 fication therefrom is little more than a guess, though perhaps 

 some light may be thrown on them by means of the local names, 

 and a study of the species on the spot. In this state of confusion 

 Linnaeus omitted the genus from his system ; and it is only in the 



