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XVI. Odfervations on the Genus of Begonia. By Jonas Dryander, M. À. 
Libr. R. S. and Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of sia 
Fellow of the Linnean Society. 
Read November 3, 1789. 
HE Genus of Begonia was firft eftablifhed by Plumier, and 
publithed in 1700 by Tournefort, in the Appendix to his 
Inftitutiones Rei Herbariz, three years before the Nova Plantarum 
Americanarum Genera of Plumier appeared. From Tournefort, 
Linnzus introduced it in the firft edition of his Genera Plantarum, 
among the Fragmenta, or fuch genera as were not fufficiently de- 
fcribed to be referred to their proper claffes; and in the fecond edi- 
tion it ftill remains in the Appendix: but in the fifth and fixth edi- 
tions he refers it to Polygamia Moneecia, though without any alte- 
ration in the defcription of the genus from that in the firft edi- 
tion. In the thirteenth edition of the Syftema Vegetabilium this | 
genus firft found its proper place in the Linnean Syftem, which i 5. 
Moncecia Poly 'andria. . 
Ludwig, in the firft edition of his Definitiones Plantarum (1737); 
introduces it very improperly in his fifth clafs, Plante flore per- 
fe&o fimplici regulari pentapetalo. - But in the fecond edition 
(1747) he gives it in the Appendix, among Fragmenta varia; and 
Bochmer alfo in the third edition (1760) refers it to Plante dubiæ. 
X 2 Linnæus, 
