ON THE CYPERACEE OF LINNEUS. . 299 
On certain Authentic Cyperacee of Linneus. 
By C. B. Crarxe, M.A., F.LS. 
[Read 15th March, 1894.] 
I HAVE, many times, worked through the Cyperacex (other than 
Carex) in the herbarium of Linneus preserved in this room, and 
have compared them with the volumes of the two editions of the 
‘Species Plantarum’ annotated in Linnezus’s handwriting. The 
herbarium of Linneus appears to have originally contained a 
perfect, or very nearly perfect, set of examples (one, two, or 
rarely more, sheets of each species) representing the Sp. Pl. ed. 
Each sheet of this set was numbered and named in the hand of 
Linneus, in ink, on the paper itself, the numbers corresponding 
always to the species-numbers in the first edition of the Sp. PI. 
The herbarium of Linnzus has been, as is well known, dis- 
arranged: a quantity of additional material has been mixed into 
it; some of the original names have been crossed out; some of 
the original sheets have been moved, and many have disappeared 
altogether. There still remain, however, in the Cyperacexe 
enough of these authentically named sheets to verify more than 
half the species described by Linneus in his Sp. Pl. From com- 
paring these so many times, I have come to the conclusion that 
we possess, in them, in every case, a specimen plant that Linneus 
himself referred to the name he wrote on them. Besides these 
(usually numbered) specimens there are a good many other sheets 
named in Linnzeus’s hand (but without numbers) which refer to 
species subsequently published under Linnzeus’s names in the Sp. 
Pl. ed. ii., in the Mantissa, and in Linn. f. Suppl. 
These authentic examples are not, however, the “types” of 
Linneus’s species in the sense understood by many modern 
botanists. Linneus conceived a species as an entity and did not 
suppose that it could be restricted to one “ type.” A “species,” 
in his Sp. Pl, is made up of 4 (or fewer) parts, viz. (a) the 
citations of predecessors ; (6) the citations of pictures; (c) the 
diagnosis of Linneus himself; (d) the authentic examples in 
Linneus’s herbarium. Perhaps the most important of these four 
is the first: Linnzeus meant invariably that his species should be 
the sp. auct. of his day ; Linnezus generally draws his diagnosis 
by directly copying from his predecessors, only altering it so far 
as to make it include his authentic specimens. Where, as is 
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