hackel's andeopogone^. 849 



lengthened. Another twenty pages might have been advantageously 

 devoted to "Conspectus Sectionum et Subsectionum." 



With the same object of compression, Hackel in general cites 

 only the original authority for each name ; he claims thus to have 

 gained space for a full description (the descriptions are often a page 

 long), which may be assumed to contain all the valuable additions 

 made to our knowledge of the s^Decies by subsequent (not cited) 

 authorities. It may nevertheless be doubted whetlaer the new plan 

 is an improvement on that adopted by Kunth and most experienced 

 authors. The citation of secondary authorities is some guide to the 

 geographic distribution, and Hackel's AndropogonecB requires every 

 aid in this department. As to the full-page descriptions, few 

 persons will find time to wade through and verify them. The 

 omission to completely reduce Kunth causes trouble in various 

 ways ; for example : a species, " hirta Linn.," is located by Kunth 

 in Central America and the United States; in the new Mono- 

 graph, the species ^' hirta'' is not recorded further north than 

 Mexico. Then the United States botanists commence writing to 

 Europe to discover "what has been done" with Kunth's United 

 States hirta. 



With the same object of compression (?), the prepositions and 

 particles are omitted to an extent that loses the reader time. On 

 p. 177 we have a diagnosis, " P. imberbis : culmo internodiis hinc 

 sulco profundo exaratis ; articulis pilis ipsis 5-6-plo brevioribas 

 apice evanidis laxissime ciliatis ; arista spicula subduplo longiore 

 vel nulla." It will take many readers anxious thought to discover 

 whether the articuli are ^ or 5 times the hairs, and to construe 

 culmo. The diagnosis does mean " culmi internodiis a sulco 

 profundo in altero latere exaratis ; articulis a pilis quam sunt ipsi 

 5-6-plo brevioribus, &c." So on p. 90 we read, " Racemi bini, 

 digitati, fasciculati," in which, according to the genius of the Latin 

 tongue, we should in English supply " and " between the adjectives ; 

 but the word meant to be supplied is "vel." These two cases are 

 not picked as proofs of accidental errors ; the Latin is done 

 throughout on this principle. The number of errors in grammar is 

 perhaps not greater than occur in many English botanic works, but 

 the errors are both many and striking for the work of so learned a 

 German ; such as (top of p. 189), " Eeliqui Spodiopogones Triniani 

 etiam inter Ischasma invenies." (How is etiam to be translated ?) 

 Mere misprints are too numerous. It is curious, in a European 

 (not a German) treatise to find Wallich's "Oude" changed to 

 "Aude"; why Sikkim is spelt with an h is not clear, as the 

 German Atlases usually spell it correctly, " Sikkiui," which is the 

 form universally adopted in Botany (Sikkimensis). But these are 

 trifling blemishes (perhaps better left unnoticed) in a work of such 

 magnitude and excellence. The matters above disputed are open 

 questions, and Prof. Hackel is well able to maintain his own view. 

 The serious drawbacks to the botanic value of the work all arise 

 from the fact that the author was unable to visit the herbaria 

 of Western Europe, especially of England ; this is especially 

 unfortunate in the case of a tribe abundant in Tropical Asia and 

 Africa. We see numerous Grasses described, from a single example, 



