PREFACE. «'^*^"«« 



DuEiNG the twenty-three years I have been at Kew I have 

 made notes on the characters of all the AmaryllidecE that have 

 passed through my hands in a living state, and have had the 

 opportunity of examining dried specimens of nearly all the 

 species of the order. I have attempted in the present work 

 to furnish cultivators and botanists with a compact working 

 handbook, of which the main part consists of characters of 

 the genera and species drawn up from actual specimens. 

 I have not attempted to deal fully with the bibliography of 

 the plants, or to trace out their pre-Linnean history, or to 

 say anything about their cultivation, or to deal, except very 

 briefly, with the garden hybrids, which are so numerous in 

 this order. For fuller information on these points I would 

 refer those who wish for it to Parkinson's ' Paradisus,' 

 Kunth's 'Enumeratio,' Bentham & Hooker's 'Genera Plant- 

 arum,' Herbert's ' Amaryllidacese ' and his other writings, and 

 the papers by Colonel Trevor Clarke in the * Gardeners* 

 Chronicle' for 1878. I have referred in the body of the 

 book to various other works, such as Burbidge's ' Narcissus ' 

 and Jacobi's 'Agavese,' that deal specially with particular 

 tribes and genera. Two out of Bentham' s five tribes of the 

 CM order, Hypoxidece and Vellosiece, have been dealt with recently 

 '"■ elsewhere so fully that I have not thought it needfal to 

 jN, include them here. I'he number of genera included is 61, 

 CD and of species admitted about 670. 



