362 MB. O. BENTHAM ON CYPERACE^I. 



Elynanthus of Nees aud subsequent authors. The latter genus 

 may, however, retain Nees's name, Beauvois's genus being rejected 

 either as quite uncertain or as a synonym of Hypoelytrum. 



Tetraria, Beauv., rather more fully described in the ' Memoires 

 de l'lnstitut ' for 1812, a Cape plant which the author says is 

 very near the Schcenus compar {Elynanthus compar, Nees), is 

 probably that very species, which has occasionally 8 stamens and 

 a 4-cleft style. As Beauvois's name is founded on a character 

 rare in the genus as now established, and as Nees's name is so 

 generally adopted, it is better to retain the latter, although more 

 recent than Beauvois's. 



Nomochloa, Beauv., was, as we are expressly told by Lestibou- 

 dois, founded on the Schcenus compressus, Linn. (Blysmus of our 

 modern Floras). Nees, with nothing before him but Beauvois's 

 very imperfect technical character, made a very wide guess in 

 referring it to Pleurostachys, Brongn., now a section of Bhyncho- 

 spora, which by no means agrees even with that imperfect cha- 

 racter; but he was puzzled with the name, Schultes not having 

 transcribed the author's explanation of its derivation. Beauvois, 

 who wished to give the idea of a marsh-plant, must have seen in 

 some dictionary or vocabulary " vophs, pabulum," and in his un- 

 classical mind, confounding pabulum with palus, thought that this 

 was just the word wanted, and Lestiboudois boldly prints as the 

 derivation " vofids, palus ; x^" a > gramen." Nees, of course, never 

 guessed at such a transmutation of a Latin word, and substituted 

 Nemochloa for Nomochloa ; but in a note to ' Plantar Meyenianaj' 

 he corrects the name back to " Nomochloa, from ro/jbs, pabulum, 

 and not Nemochloa, from repos, nemus." Again, however, in the 

 ' Flora Brasiliensis ' he says that this correction is wrong, that 

 the real name is Nemochloa, because the plants he understood by. 

 it grow in shady woods, and that Beauvois so intended it, and 

 only by a slip of the pen wrote Nomochloa for Nemochloa. All 

 this far-fetched guesswork falls to the ground on turning to 

 Lestiboudois's original paper. 



Dichostyles, Beauv., was intended for all Brown's species of 

 Isolepis with bifid styles, including the Scirpus dipsaceus, Eottb., 

 or Echinolytrum, Desv., now referred to Fimbristylis. Nees 

 transferred the name to the Scirpus Michelianus, now united with 

 Cyperus pygmceus, and probably not included by Beauvois in his 

 Dichostyles. 



Heleophylax, Desv., a genus overlooked both by Nees and by 



