Dr. Smiths botanical Hficry of Mentha cyg'ta. 19 



in this inftancc been inftrumental in leading them affray, by con- 

 fiding too heeillcfsly ill my predeceiTors. 



At fome period between the publication of the fir ft edition of 

 Species Plant arum, 1753, and the Cenluria ida Plant arum, 1 7 56 (Am. 

 Acad. vol. iv. 297}, Linnxus received from the late Mr. Philip Miller 

 of Chelfea two dried fpecimens of an apparent fpecics of Mentha 

 (mint), marked Mentha a quaiica ex igua 'Tragi, lib. i. cap. 6. Upon 

 what authority Linnxus confidered this as an Englilh plant I 

 cannot precifely tell, nothing occurring on the fubjecl in Miller's 

 letters of that period. Probably the above fynonym induced Lin- 

 nxus to believe this was the plant fo denominated in the third 

 edition of Ray's Sy nop/is, p. 232, No. 2; and although he might rea- 

 dily perceive it was not the plant of Tragus, his figure being "fo 

 very different, yet it might reafonably be prefumed that Miller, by 

 marking it fo decidedly, knew it to be the plant of Ray, or rather 

 of his editor Dillenius. Linnxus therefore without fcruple quotes 

 the Synopfis, and at the fame time incautioufly copies from thence 

 two fynonyms of Lobel and Fuchfius, which are both fo diilimilar 

 to the fpecimens then before him, that, with all my confidence in 

 his accuracy, I cannot help attributing his omiflion of the name 

 and page of Tragus, rather to carelefihefs than intention ; for the 

 figure of the latter is not more unlike the Me?itha exigua than thofe 

 of Lobel and Fuchfius, Thus however it was introduced into the 

 Centuria ida Plantarum^ and Syjl. Nat. eJ. x. and in 1763 made its ap- 

 pearance in the fecond edition of Species Plantarum, p. 806, the fpe- 

 cific character being taken from Miller's fpecimens, ftill preferved 

 in the Linnean Herbarium, duplicates of which are in the collection 

 of Miller himfelf, at prefent belonging to Sir Jofeph Banks. 



Mr. Hudfon in the mean time publiihed the firft edition of his 

 Flora Anglica in 1762, and on the authority of the Cent. Plant. 



D 2. mentions 



