34 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



India, has followed Korthals' steps. For the information which enables 

 me to fix their synonymy, and give their true characters, I am indebted 

 to the Nestor of our science, Robert Brown. Nearly half a century 

 ago, this most sagacious and conscientious botanist had identified with 

 Timonius of Rumphius a plant collected by Sir Joseph Banks at En- 

 deavor River, and by himself on the same coast of tropical Australia ; 

 and in the Banksian herbarium he had referred the Eritlialis of Fors- 

 ter (not of Linnteus) to the same genus. An allied plant of the Sand- 

 wich Islands (the type of Gaudichaud's genus Boheci) was also known 

 to Mr. Brown, and suspected to be not congeneric with Timonius. 



Desfontaines, in the year 1820, established his genus Polyphragmon 

 upon the original Timonius. 



In 1829, Chamisso and Schlechtendal pubhshed in the Linnsea their 

 genus Burneya, founding it upon Forster's Erithalis, and adding the 

 Sandwich Island plant, with some doubt, as a second species. 



Still earlier, however, Gaudichaud had issued his plate of the latter 

 plant, founding on it his genus Bohea ; but his volume of letter-press, 

 although it bears the date of 1826, was not published until 1830. 



In that year De Candolle published the fourth volume of the Prodro- 

 mus. Adopting, in place of Burneya, the name of Timonius, — proba- 

 bly from the Banksian herbarium, — he followed Chamisso and Schlec- 

 tendal in referring the Sandwich Island plant and Forster's Erithalis to 

 the same genus, but took the carpological characters wholly from the 

 former. That he had no idea of the fruit of the latter, and that he had 

 not in fact recognized the Timonius of Rumphius, appears from his 

 having referred the fruit of Forster's plant, as figured by the younger 

 Ga3rtner, to another genus, viz. the Polyphragmon of Desfontaines, 

 which is pretty clearly the original 2Ymom'iis. 



More recently (in 1849 ?) Korthals undertook to elucidate these 

 plants. But he wrongly describes the internal structure of the seed ; 

 he refers the original Timonius to Polyphragmon, instead of Polyphrag- 

 mon to it ; he divides congeneric species between his Bohea and Poly- 

 phragmon ; and, finally, he had not the means of knowing the leading 

 character of Gaudichaud's genus Bohea, i. e. the irabricative aestivation' 

 of the corolla. 



Lastly, Miquel follows Korthals implicitly ; but in his addenda to 

 RuhiacecB (Fl. Ind. Bat. 2, p. 355), he states that the fruit of Bohea is 

 the same in structure as Polyphragmon. Still the fact that the fruit of 

 the original Bohea is figured and described quite otherwise does not 

 arrest his attention nor suggest the true state of the case. 



