2 Contributions from the Gray Herbarium 



South America. Many new species were described, the range of 



many others extended, and for the first time a certain amount of 



order was brought into the chaos which had hitherto reigned in the 

 classification of the Middle American species. In the same year 

 Hemsley recorded in the Biologia Centrali-Americana 39 species, 



besides one unidentified species, from Mexico and ( Vnt ral America. 

 This lis! is based chiefly on Bennett's work, but many of the identi- 

 fications there recorded are erroneous. Between this date and 1891 

 several new species of considerable interest were published by Wat- 

 son, chiefly from Palmer's and Pringle's collections. 



A new epoch in the study of the genus Pohjgala was initiated by 

 the appearance of Chodat's monograph in 1893. Here the species 

 of the world, some 405 in number (of w T hich some 57 were recorded 

 from Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies), were divided 

 into ten well-marked sections, and the great value of the characters 

 to be derived from the persistence or deciduousness of sepals and 

 wings, the nature of aril, capsule, and style, and the clothing of the 

 seed, received due recognition and illustration. Unfortunately this 

 work, on which all future taxonomic study of the genus must be 

 based, is marred by many typographical and other inaccuracies. 

 One finds two new species described under the same name, and even 

 two consecutive valid species maintained with the same trivial; un- 

 fortunate errors of geography, of author-citation, and of nomen- 

 clature ; omission of mention of species described in easily accessible 

 works ; and keys so loosely drawn up as to be frequently mislead- 

 ing. All these faults, however, cannot obscure the real worth of 

 Chodat's monograph, which in its main lines is thoroughly sound, 

 and from its wealth of illustration must always remain an indis- 

 pensible work of reference. 



The genus Poly gala, in the wide sense in which it is taken by 

 Chodat and by the writer, includes forms of great diversity in habit 

 and considerable difference in structural characters, but the ten sec- 

 tions into which it is divided by Chodat, although well defined, are 

 so regularly graduated that the separation of any one of the few 

 (Phlebotaenia, Badiera, Acanthocladus, Chamaebuxus) sometimes 

 recognized as distinct would involve in consistency the recognition 

 of all. Its two or (if the species of Chamaebuxus with beaked keel 

 be distinguished) three primary divisions based on the structure of 

 the keel possess greatest claim to generic rank, although no one has 



