LIED 
XIX. A New Arrangement of the Plants of the Monandrian Class 
usually y called Scitaminee. By William Rosc Aas Ver P. m L.S. 
Read April 15, and May. 6, 1806. . 
Tes Scitaminean Plants, s so callec 
or spicy qualities, occupy the greater portion of the first, or 
Monandrian class, in the Linnean system of vegetables. They 
are a tribe of great beauty and considerable utility; natives of 
warm climates, where they are mostly found in moist situations. 
The chief part of them have been discovered i in the East-Indies; 
a few in Africa; and still fewer in America. 
The first attempt to reduce these plants to their proper genera, 
appears to have been made by Linnzus, in the Musa Cliffor- 
tiana.—In his Fragments of a Natural Order, he has united them 
with the Muse ; to which, in the more ygportant emm ya their 
fructification, they bear but little affinity. 
The disadvantages which attended the ety of these > phir 
in the time of Linnzeus were, in fact, too great to be surmounted. 
His descriptions could only have been formed, for the most part, 
on the labours of preceding. botanists ; the figures of Van Rheede, 
Rumphius, and others ; and in some instances, from dried speci- 
mens. In establishing the different genera, he has relied chiefly 
on the number and form of the pt: ; without sufficiently at- 
tending to those ı more important parts of the fructification on 
which the rest of his system i is chiefly founded. chor se 
After having completed his labours on this nfcon so ; sienible 
was he of their insufficiency, as expressly . to admonish his 
readers, 
"on account - their aromatic - 
de 
