POLYGAL^ AMERICANS. 137 



The determination of this interesting x^lant adds another to the 

 list of genera, often comprising very few species, common to the 

 eastern shores of the Mediterranean and to the extreme east 

 of Asia, some examples of which I adduced in this journal a few 

 years since.* The most easterly station of F. philhjraoides is 

 separated by no less than eighty degrees of longitude from the 

 habitat of its now first-described and very near relative. As 

 bearuig more or less closely on this curious subject, the reader will 

 do well to consult the remarks of M. Alphonse DeCandolle,+ Prof. 

 Asa Gray's ' Essay on Sequoia,' \ Sir Joseph Hooker's lecture *' On 

 the distribution of the North American Flora," delivered at the 

 Royal Institution, on the 12th April, 1878, and that of Mr. 

 Thiselton Dyer " On plant-distribution as a field for geographical 

 research." ^ 



POLYGAL^ AMERICANS NOV^ VEL PARUM 

 COGNITiE. 



By Alfred W. Bennett, M.A., B.Sc, F.L.S. 



The vegetable productions of the vast territory of the American 

 Continent have been arranged in systematic Floras chiefly as far as 

 regards the Rej)ublic of the United States in the Northern, and the 

 Empire of Brazil in the Southern, hemisphere. A fairly complete 

 knowledge of the former may be obtained from Torrey and Gray's 

 ' Flora of North America,' Wood's ' Class Book of Botany,' and 

 Prof. Sereno Watson's ' Bibliographical Index to North American 

 Botany,' or at least this will be the case as soon as all these works 

 are completed; while Martius's ' Flora Brasiliensis,' should it ever 

 be brought to a conclusion, will be the most magnificent and 

 complete local Flora ever published. There is at present no means 

 of obtaining a similar survey of the productions of the British and 

 Alaskan territories of North America, Mexico, Central America, 

 Peru, Chile, Patagonia, and the other indej)endent states of South 

 America, some of them possessing very rich and varied floras. 

 The botanist in search of the diagnoses of the native plants of 

 these regions has to run through a great number of publications, 

 such as Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth's ' Nova Genera et Species 

 Plantarum,' Gray's ' Plant ae Wrightianae, Fendlerianae, & Lind- 

 heimerianae,' Triana and Planchon's ' Contributions to the Flora 

 of New Grenada,' Bentham's ' Plantse Hartwegiante ' and 'Botany 

 of the Sulphur,' Ruiz and Pavon's Flora of Peru, Gay's Flora of 

 Chile, and many other books and detached papers. 



In the following pages an attempt is made to supply this 

 deficiency as far as regards a single genus, which is more or less 



* Trimen, ' Journ. Bot.' xi., 169. ^ Geogr. Bot., ii., 1131. 



J Darwiniana, 205, § Proc. E. Geogr. Soc, xxii , u. G. 



