and move one to make a new and careful investigation of the 
characters of Nuphar, this circumstance, that none were dis- 
cerned by Tournefort, Plumier, Dillen, Micheli, Vaillant, Linné, 
Haller, Adanson, Jussieu, Jacquin, Meench or Gertner. When 
all these and other celebrated men of that splendid epoch had 
failed to perceive that the so-called yellow pond-lilies were of a 
different genus from the white, it is, if true, somewhat remark- 
able that a man so little above mediocrity in point of talent as 
Sir J. E. Smith, should have been the one to distinguish them. 
But that it was he is what all our books now seem to say ; for 
_ Nuphar is everywhere credited to Smith, who published it in 
Sibthorp’s Flora Greca in 1806. That the genus is entirely 
valid we may well believe from this, that ever since its promul- 
gation, now eighty years ago, it has been approved by all author- 
ities, even finding ready acceptance with that celebrated cotem- 
porary writer upon genera, Professor Baillon, who is so little dis- 
posed to admit genera with weak characters, that he remands 
‘Neguudo to Acer, Coptis to Helleborus, and writes Aconitum as 
doubtfully distinct from Delphinium. As for the author to whom 
should be accorded the honor of having separated these two 
water-lily genera aforetime confounded, I venture to express a 
doubt that it is Smith. Such a fine piece of generical discrimi- 
nation seems far less likely to have emanated from ‘that plodding 
conventionalist, than from the penetrating and analytical mind of - 
his gifted rival, Salisbury. It was the latter who took the water- 
lilies out of the Papaveracez, where they had been placed by 
the elder Jussieu, and founded on them the new natural order, 
Nymphzacez, at the same time separating generically the white 
from the yellow-flowered kinds. It is certain that a portion of 
this work was published prior to the appearing of Smith’s Ww- 
phar ; perhaps all of it was; for there is apparently some doubt 
as to whether the part of Koenig and Sim’s Annals contain- 
ing Salisbury’s dissertation is of the date 1805 or 1806. This 
work must now be rare, and I have not seen it. But the plate 
in the Paradisus Londinensis, bearing the figure and the name of 
Salisbury’s Castalia magnifica, was published in October, 1805, 
and this plate alone would almost or altogether establish a gen- 
erical priority. If the corresponding pages of the Annals also 
