14 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [ FEB. 22, 
February 22, 1892. 
ANNUAL MEETING. 
Fifteen persons present. 
In the absence of the regular officers, PRor. REEs was chosen to 
preside. 
The minutes of February 15th were read and approved. 
The chairman called for reports of standing committees. 
In the absence of the chairman, Dr. Brirron made a brief verbal 
report for the Audubon Monument Committee, and requested that 
the committee be continued. Granted. 
The committee on the Joy Memorial reported progress, and re- 
quested to be continued. Granted. 
Pror. Brirron read the following paper by title :— 
A List of Species of the Genera Scirpus and Rynchospora 
occurring in North America. 
BY N. L. BRITTON. 
Read Feb. 22, 1892. 
SCIRPUS, L. Gen. Pl., 12 (1737). 
The genus Scirpus was described by Linneus in his ‘‘ Genera 
Plantarum,” p. 12 (1737), and he there attributes the name to 
Micheli. Linnzeus described the species as known to him in 1753 
in his ‘Species Plantarum,” pp. 47-52, naming S. articulatus, of 
Java, first. This is therefore the type of the genus. 
The North American species were monographed by Torrey, in his 
‘Monograph of North American Cyperacee” (Ann. Lyc. Nat. Hist. 
N. Y., iii, 316-334 (1836)). He recognized fifteen, one of which 
has since been found to be an Hleocharis. The number now known 
to me is thirty-six, two of which occur only in Mexico. 
Scirpus is closely related to Lleocharis on the one hand and 
Rynchospora on the other. I have givena list of the North American 
species of Lleocharis in the Journal of the New York Microscopical 
Society, v, pp. 95-111. Scirpus is principally distinguished from 
Eleocharis by the absence of the persistent enlarged base of the 
style which is so good a mark of the latter genus. In Scirpus the 
style is slender and falls away leaving the apex of the achenium 
merely pointed. 
In this paper, as in my preceding one on Hleocharis, I have been 
greatly assisted by Mr. C. B. Clarke, of Kew, who has determined 
