ME. G. BENTIIAM ON CYPEBACEJE. 363 



Kunth, is apparently the Scirpus lacustris, Linn. (S. taberna- 

 •montanus of others), separated from Scirpus on account of the 

 bifid (not trifid) styles, a character not constant in the species. 



Zimnochloa, Beauv., was intended by the author for all the 

 species of Heleocharis with trifid styles. This separation not 

 being now adopted, the name has been made use of for a section 

 of Heleocharis distinguished by other characters. 



Hymenochcete, Beauv., is not determinable without an authentic 

 specimen. The author himself says that perhaps it ought to be 

 united with EriopTiorum ; but his description does not agree with 

 any species of that genus. Nees sought to identify it with Scir- 

 pus grossus, Linn., a plant still more at variance with Beauvois's 

 character, imperfect as it is; and the name must now be altogether 

 dropped. 



Since Lestiboudois's essay, Cyperaceae have been specially taken 

 up by several systematic botanists. Nees von Esenbeck, in the 

 seventh, ninth, and tenth volumes of the Linnsea, in Wight's 

 ' Contributions to Indian Botany,' and in the great 'Flora Bra- 

 siliensis,' worked up the South- African, the East-Indian, and the 

 tropical- American species with great ability. But he created some 

 confusion, as well by his usual tendency to raise species to the 

 rank of genera, as by a want of reference to the original papers or 

 works where Cyperacea? had been described, and by using a ter- 

 minology occasionally founded on mistaken views of the homology 

 of floral organs. 



Kunth, following Nees's earlier papers, but before the publica- 

 tion of the Cyperacea? of the ' Flora Brasiliensis/ elaborated the 

 whole Order with great care and perspicuity, as far as he was able 

 with the materials and libraries at his command. His papers 

 in the first and second volumes of "Wiegmann's ' Archiv,' and in 

 the second volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin 

 clearly demonstrated the homology of the utricle of Cares, and 

 generally of the floral organs in the Order ; and his monograph, 

 forming the second volume of his 'Enumeratio Plantarum,' is 

 very much to be relied upon in every thing that he states on 

 . his own authority. His chief errors are sometimes a tendency 

 in his general monographs to give as characters rather what 

 in theory we ought to see than what we actually do see, and, in 

 his later works, to describe specimens rather than species. 



Steudel came next, with his 'Synopsis Plantarum Glumacearum,' 

 which would have been a very useful work if he had had any idea 



