ss ll ee: eee eee 7 ee eee eee a a all il - ee pe 
472 ROBINSON. 
1, 1857. He says, in part: “Again, after the first part of Mr. Weddell’s 
work has appeared in Paris, and whilst the second is announced as ready, 
. a learned botanist in another country, with no materials but what 
his own herbarium and library afford, suddenly publishes monographs of 
some of the largest genera of Urticew .. 2”. 
Weddell himself says in an appendix on page 588 of the monograph, 
“Pendant que je corrigeais les derniers chapitres de cet ouvrage, on a 
recu a Paris les feuilles 13 a 16 du Museum botanicum lugduno-batavum 
de M. le professeur Blume, faisant suite a celles dont il a été question 
antérieurement (p. 48 et 90). C’est done dans V’intervalle écoulé entre 
la publication des feuilles 12 et 13 de ce travail qu’ont paru les 400 pre- 
miéres pages de ma Monographie, dont M. Blume ne semble d’ailleurs 
pas avoir eu connaissance, bien que la publication de la derniére livraison 
ait précédé de plusieurs mois celle de la partie de son ouvrage que 
jannonce aujourd’hui.” 
To Dr. B. Daydon Jackson, general secretary of the Linnean Society 
of London, and to Dr. J. H. Barnhart, of the New York Botanical 
Garden, I am greatly indebted for additional data. The former writes 
(to the Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who had kindly forwarded 
to him my request for information). 
“T am sorry to say that though I have spent most of the day in the search, 
I am unable to say what pages and plates came out in 1856. The title-page of 
Vol. IX of the Archives du Muséum, gives the date thus: ‘1856-57,’ and I have 
not succeeded in finding any side-light on the separate issues. Thus in Bull. Soc. 
Bot. Fr. iv. (1857) p. 839, we learn that it came out in 4 parts, and in Hook. 
Kew Journ, ix. (1857) p. 347 we learn further that part 1 appeared in 1856. 
The work does not seem to have been reveiwed in the ‘Botanische Zeitung,’ 
‘Flora, ‘Gard. Chron.’ or ‘Linnaea.’ 
“Our own records show that the thanks of the Society were accorded for 
parts 1-3 on 21st April 1857, and for part 4 on 5th Nov. 1857. But against 
this I find under date of 18th Nov. 1856, ‘Monographie de la Famille des Urticées 
par H. A. Weddell, D. M. P. ete. Presented by the Author.’ It thus looks as if 
the author had early complete copies, which he distributed in 1856, for that is 
also the date on the reprint title-page. Afterwards the official distribution took 
place, but I am unable to give particulars of this. 
“No wrappers have been bound in of either copy in our library.” 
For the purposes of this paper, the decision reached is to accept 
Weddell’s statement with its implication, that the first 400 pages of his 
monograph appeared between the 12th and the 13th parts of the second 
volume of the Mus. Bot. Lugd.-Bat., but that fascicle 13 of the latter 
preceded the remainder of the monograph. It then becomes academic to 
question whether the date of these later portions of the works of either 
author was 1856 or 1857. 
The evidence is all against taking Blume’s statements of dates as 
accurate, but if certain fascicles appeared at the beginning of February, 
! 
: 
i 
