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XVI. A Monograph of the Genus PcEonia. By the late George 

 Anderso7i, Esq. F.L.S. ^c. 



Read February 4 atid 18, J 817- 



The male and female Piieonies of Theophrastus, Pliny and Di- 

 oscorides are ascei'tained to be the plants that were known by 

 those names after the revival of letters. Clusius, of the sixteenth 

 century, seems to have been the first who made any addition to 

 these. That truly original writer describes the plants l>e saw du- 

 ring his travels with a clearness which, considering the infant 

 state of science at the time, deserves more praise than seems to 

 have been bestowed on him. A number of botanical authors 

 towards the close of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth 

 century, chiefly copying him and each other, increased the cata- 

 logue ; but their descriptions are in general so ill defined, and so 

 replete with inaccuracies, that much information cannot be ol?- 

 tained from them. John Bauhin and our countryman Morison 

 are the principal writers, after Clusius, who can be depended 

 upon, till the days of Linne ; and his opinions upon Paeonies were 

 singular and erroneous. 



In the Horttis ClJLJl'ortianits, his earliest publication, in 1737, he 

 discloses doubts on the subject by observing underneath P. offici- 

 nalis — " Qui considerat notas essentiales structuramque plantce, non 

 potest non palpitare vastum istum apud authores numerum, 7ion nisi 

 meris varietatibus constare." He afterwards makes up his mind ; 

 and in the first edition of Species Plantar um reduces all the Paeo- 

 nies 



