236 Sir J. E. Suirrn's Botanical History 
changes of names, and speculations in classification. Tle former 
can only be permitted, if at all, to the most eminent leaders and 
reformers of botanical science, who may be capable of acquiring 
supreme authority in ihe latter. 
The writer of this paper has never thought himself more di- 
rectly pursuing the best objects of that Society, now so eminent, 
and so extensively useful, to whose service he has so long been 
devoted, than when employed in those practical investigations 
and criticisms, by which its * Transactions" are particularly distin- 
guished. "These subjects are so far from being exhausted, that 
scarcely any considerable genus of plants could be taken at ran- 
dom out of the Linnæan herbarium, without affording matter for 
an ample dissertation. 
. The genus Tofieldia is known to have been involved in much 
confusion, as to its name and character ; but no one seems aware 
of the still. greater confusion, and intricate misapprehensions, 
which concern its species. - ak: shall attempt to unravel both these 
subjects. 
The late Mr. Dryander has well pointed out, in die second 
edition of Mr. Aiton’s Hort. Kew. v. ii. 324, that our present Tofi- 
eldia was the real and original Anthericum of Linnzus, in his Ge- 
nera Plantarum, ed. i. 106. Accordingly it there stands in the 
Herandria Trigynia. But in the second edition of the same work, 
published five years afterwards, the author combines, or rather 
confounds, with this genus his own Bulbine, Gen. Pl. ed. i. 95, as 
Tournefort had done before him. In the first edition of the 
Species Plantarum therefore Anthericum is a most heterogeneous 
assemblage ; and so it continued in all the subsequent publica- 
tions of the great Swedish botanist. Some things have been 
done in England still further to embroil, and some to reform it. 
The Hortus Kewensis, and Mr. Brown's Prodromus, stand emi- 
nently 
