426 ENUMERATION OF LEGUMINOSAE. 
rence of his common faults of giving generic characters ap- 
plying often to only one of the species referred to the genus, 
of extracting a specific diagnosis from some other work or 
taking it from a different plant from the one he describes in 
detail, so that the diagnosis and description are often in 
direct opposition to each other, &c., it will readily be seen 
that the identifying his species must, in most cases, be mere 
guess-work. 
De Candolle enumerated 346 Cape Papilionacez, but he 
had but few materials and was unable to clear up much of the 
confusion he found, although he reduced to a much better 
generic arrangement the few species he had means of exa- 
mining. After him, Ernst Meyer, in the 7th vol. of the Lin- 
nga, published near 50 new Cape Papilionacec under such of 
De Candolles genera, as they appeared to him to come 
nearest to, but with very short diagnoses and no precise in- 
dication of generic characters, thus adding so many to the 
number of species undeterminable without inspection of au- 
thentic specimens. 
Next appeared, in the commencement of 1836, two elabo- 
rate works on Cape Leguminose, written at one and the 
same time by different botanists without any communication 
with each other, each remodelling existing genera, and esta- 
blishing new ones, and each publishing for the first time 
between two and three hundred entirely new species. These 
two works, the first part of Ernst Meyer’s Commentationes de 
Plantis Africe Australioris, and the second of Ecklon and 
Zeyher’s Enumeratio Plantarum Africe Australis, were ac- 
tually published so nearly at the same moment, that it has 
become a matter of controversy which should have the 
priority. Dr. Walpers, adjudging it to the latter, (as has 
also been done by Endlicher and by Steudel), has altered 
Meyer’ s names to suit Ecklon and Zeyher’s genera; whilst 
Dr. Meissner, on the contrary, has claimed the right for 
Meyer, and, consequently, re-named a considerable number 
of Ecklon and Zeyher’s species. The facts, as far as known 
to the public, appear to be as follows: E. Meyers MS. 
