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II. The Botanical Hijlory of the Genus Ehrharta. By Olof Swartz., 



M.D. F.M.L.S. 



Read January 7, 1800. 



.Among the nmnerous botanical acquifitions made upwards of 

 twenty years ago by Profeffor Thunberg during his extenfive pere- 

 grinations in the fouthern part of Africa, was a kind of grafs, whofe 

 difference from all before known, occafioned him to confider it as a 

 peculiarly diftin6t genus. It was afterwards defcribed and deline- 

 ated by him in the Memoirs of the Swedifh Royal Academy for 1 779, 

 p. a 1 6. /. 8. under the name of Ehrharta, in honour of F. Ehrhart, 

 native of Berne in Switzerland, once a pupil of the elder Linnaeus, 

 and His Britannic Majefty's botanift at Hanover; a man of great 

 merit in the fcience of botany, and who is well known by his 

 laboiirs, particularly in the hiftory of graffes and the cryptogamous 

 tribe. 



The fame year this genus was adopted amongft the Nova Graminum 

 Genera, arranged in a differtation under the prefidency of the younger 

 Linnaeus at Upfala. 



In the mean time, the Abbe Rozier publiflied in his Journal de 

 Phyfique, 1779, /. 225. a botanical defcription made by L. Richard, 

 of a kind of grafs called by \\\m.TrocheraJlriata, of which, notwith- 

 ftanding the indifferent figure he has given, it is not difficult to per- 

 ceive the near affinity with the former. 



Several years afterwards the Prefident of the Linnaean Society 

 tlsfcribed in the firft fafciculus of his Plantarum Icones haSlenus ineditcv, 



t.g. 



