368 



History Museum, Loudon, bears the legend, in Wallicli's hand- 

 writing: — "902 Dioseorea aculeata exclusis forsan synon. 

 Rheed. & Kumph. H. B. C. August 1815." A duplicate of this 

 specimen, now without the original label, is preserved in the 

 Imperial Herbarium, Petrograd. When in 1832 Wallich was 

 engaged in London in the distribution of the Hon. East India 

 Company's herbarium, he appears to have overlooked what 

 Roxburgh had done with regard to the Mou and the Susni Tarns 



in his Hortus Bengalensis and his Flora Indica * and to have 

 forgot his own action of seventeen years before. Amalgamating 

 in his distribution the Mou and the Susni, as well as other 

 Dioscoreae, Wallich employed for his aggregate the name D. 

 soinosa, Roxb., used for the Mou-alu only and even as regards 

 that particular plant altogether discarded when, quite early in 

 his career, Roxburgh decided that the Mou was a form of Com- 

 bilium and was therefore the plant w T hich in 1754 Linnaeus had 

 named D. aculeata. The particular form to which Roxburgh did 

 apply the Linnean name agrees so precisely with Rheede's figure 

 of Mu-kelengu that the only surprise which those who, profiting 

 by the acumen and sagacity of Hooker in identifying Rheede's 

 plant with the Combilium of Rumphius, now experience, is that 

 botanists so judicious as Roxburgh and Hamilton should have 

 failed to observe that the Mu of Malabar and the Mou of Bengal 

 are the same plant, the linked terms Kilengu and Alu being exact 

 equivalents. 



The name T). spinosa, Roxb. ex Wall. {Cat.- Lith. n. 5103), f was 



* Copies of Carey's edition of Roxburgh's Flora Indica had not reached 

 London when this distribution took place. But it should be recollected that 

 the Flora Indica of Roxburgh occupies, among works of its kind, the singular 

 position of having been published and in habitual use by botanists many years 

 before it was printed. We have the testimony of Buchanan (afterwards Hamil- 

 ton) to this effect in a letter dated 11th April, 1797 (Ann. Roy. Boi. Gard. 

 Calcutta, vol. x. pars 2, p, x). Moreover the title-sheet to the second part of 

 Roxburgh's Horius Bengalensis, dated 1813, indicates that this part consists 



of a list of those species described by Roxburgh in his Flora Indica which 

 bad not then been introduced to the Hon. Company's Garden at Calcutta. 

 Wallich was one of those who owned a manuscript copy of the Flora Indica; 

 whether he had it with him in London is not known ; other copies were 

 already in England in 1832. The case is one with which the wisdom of 

 systematic students in congress assembled has failed to cope equitably ; a 

 knowledge of the facts does, however, induce sympathy with Griffith in the 

 strictures which serve as a preface to his edition of the Cryptogamic portion 

 of Roxburgh's Flora, published in 1844. 



t The results which attend the necessity of working under pressure are 

 unusually manifest in AVallich's treatment of D., spinosa, Roxb. ex Wall. 

 {Cat Lith. n. 5103). The admixture of species under this number is a 

 tritiing drawback as compared with the reduction to a mere jumble of 

 synonyms of the orderly and reasoned treatment elaborated by Hamilton. 

 ]S"o injustice is done to Roxburgh in this instance because none of the 

 specimens dealt with had been examined by Roxburgh. It seems in this 

 instance worth while to effect the reductions which AVallich's treatment has 

 rendered necessary. 



5103. Dioseorea spinosa, Roxb. A. D. Combilium, H. Ham. Gungachara 

 et Gungachara (Lith. Cat). Corrected by Wallich himself in Herb. Propr. 

 to "Gungachara et Phuranbari." There is no Gungachara specimen. The 

 one present is written up by Hamilton as follows:— D. Combilium. Phuran- 

 bari, 9 Feb 1809. It is the Mou-alu. forma culta. 



PB. D. lursuta, bl. Ham. e Gualpara et Monghir. There is no Mongyr 



