BOMBAY GRASSES. 117 



culties, the spikelets or flowers, being small, nay often minute, and the 

 glumes or floral parts of the same colour. Hence to distinguish one 

 genus or species from the other genera or species, it is necessary to 

 examine the number of glumes, their relative size, their position, 

 their conformation and hairiness, and other minute characters, 

 which demand constant use of the lens and microscope. The sub- 

 ject is so difficult that, in his Preface to the Flora Australiemis, 

 Mr. Geo. Bentham, one of the most eminent English botanists, says : — 

 " GraminecB have been the object of special studies of several of the 

 most eminent botanists, amongst which the labours of Brown, of 

 Kunth, and of Trinius have been the most important. But the 

 only general enumeration they have left is that of Kunth, who had 

 not at that time the materials nor yet the leisure to investigate the 

 synonymy, which had already become exceedingly confused. 

 This confusion has been gradually increasing by the large number 

 of species described in partial works, without that general compa- 

 rison which is especially needed in an order in which a large 

 proportion of the species have a very wide geographical distribu- 

 tion, and it has become more especially involved through Steudel's 

 more recent hasty and careless compilation (Synopsis Plantarum 

 Glumaceamm). Nothing, therefore, is now more needed than a 

 careful and judicious synoptical revision of the whole Order. 

 Such a one is now in progress for De Candolle's Monographs by 

 my friend, General Munro, who has for a number of years made 

 Graminece his special study, as well on living plants in tropical 

 and temperate countries, as on dried specimens from the principal 

 herbaria of the day, and in the correctness of whose views all 

 those who have studied the partial memoirs he has published, feel 

 fully convinced. Without his kind assistance the preparation of 

 this part of my Flora would have been doubly laborious. He has, 

 however, guided me throughout, and although I am far from hold- 

 ing him responsible for the generic and specific arrangement 

 and characters here given, it is to him that I am indebted for many 

 of them, and the whole have been the subject of discussion 

 between us." 



Mr. J. F. Duthie, Director of the Botanical Department of 

 Northern India, who has, by the direction of Government, devoted 



