236 Sir J. E. Smith's Botanical Tlisfori/ 



changes of names, and speculations in classification. Tfte former 

 can only be permitted, if at all, to the most eminent leaders and 

 reformers of botanical science, wlio may be capable of acquiring 

 supreme authority in the latter. 



The writer of this paper has never thought himself more di- 

 rectly pursuing the best objects of that Society, now so eminent, 

 and so extensively useful, to whose service he has so long been 

 devoted, than when employed in those practical investigations 

 and criticisms, by which its " Transactions" are particularly distin- 

 guished. These subjects are so far from being exhausted, that 

 scarcely any considerable genus of plants could be taken at ran- 

 dom out of the Linnaean herbarium, without afiording matter for 

 an ample dissertation. 



The genus Tojiddia is known to have been involved in much 

 confusion, as to its name and character; but no one seems aware 

 of the still greater confusion, and intricate misapprehensions, 

 which concern its species. I shall attempt to unravel both these 

 subjects. 



The late Mr. Dryander has well pointed out, in the second 

 edition of Mr. Aiton's Ilort. Kew. v. ii. 324, that our present Toji- 

 eldia was the real and original Antliericum of Linnaeus, in his Ge- 

 nera Flantarum, cd. i. 106. Accordingly it there stands in the 

 Hexaiidria Trigijnia. But in the second edition of the same work, 

 published five years afterwards, the author combines, or rather 

 confounds, with this genus his own Bidbine, Gen. PL ed. i. 95, as 

 Tournefort had done before him. In the first edition of the 

 Species Plantar itm therefore Anthericum is a most heterogeneous 

 assemblage; and so it continued in all the subsequent publica- 

 tions of the great Swedish botanist. Some things have been 

 done in England still further to embroil, and some to reform it. 

 The Hortus Kezoensis, and Mr. Brown's Prodromus, stand emi- 

 nently 



