б INTRODUCTION. 
Ecastaphyllum, though so very artificially distinguished, had become so well known 
under this name that it appeared to Bentham convenient to retain it as a genus; 
Selenolohium is, as in the Plantae Junghuhnianae, treated as a section of Dalbergia ; 
Dalbergia proper is further subdivided into Tríp/olemez, Sissoa, and Dalbergaria. Dalbergaria 
is precisely the section of this name proposed nine years earlier. 518802, how- 
ever, is somewhat curtailed owing to the separation of Triptslemea, within which 
are placed all the species, previously referred to Sissoa, that have very small 
flowers disposed in 2—3-chotomous cymes. For the species, as known to Bentham, 
the system thus provided was at least quite convenient; so satisfactory, indeed, did 
it prove that when, in 1865, Bentham had occasion to again review the Dalhbergicae,* 
he adopted the same four sections; and when, іп 1869, ВаШоп independently 
reviewed the Leguminosae that author also found it unnecessary to modify Bentham’s 
arrangement of 1860, It is, of course, easy now, when the details of structure 
and the limits of species are better known than they were in 1860, to point out 
certain objections to a system which, as Bentham has expressly warned us, pro- 
vides us with sections that are defined by rather uncertain characters; indeed, 
he has himself indicated in the Genera Plantarum the feature which chiefly invalidates 
it, since he has pointed out that D, reniformis, which in 1860 he had referred to 
Dalbergaria, might be referred to Selenolobium equally with the species he had 
already placed in that section. Now these other species, but for their semilunar 
pods, would have been species of Sissoa; so that within Selenolobium there is the same 
cleavage as there is within Dalbergia proper, since we have D. parviflora, by flowers a 
Zriptolemez, in which Bentham has placed it, and by fruit a Selenolobium as Miquel has 
pointed out ; D. torta, by flowers а Sissoa, and D. reniformis, by flowers a Dalbergaria, 
are, by pods, equally Selerololia, Any system of delimitation that is to be logically 
exuct must, in view of these facts, either further subdivide Selenolobium exactly as 
Dalbergia proper is subdivided or must accept Bentham’s verdict as to the un- 
importance of modifications of the pod not only so far as the limitation of genera, but 
so far as the limitation of sections is concerned. There is, however, a further 
and, the writer believes, valid objection, not to the results, which are really good, but 
to the presentation of the four sections admiited by Bentham. They cannot be 
stated serially without remark because, besides being of unequal rank, they are the 
outcome of a successive dichotomy as follows :— 
"— 
| | 
Selenolobium Dalbergia Proper 
| 
n 
Dalbergaria | Sissoa 
| 
| | 
Sissoa Proper Triptolemea 
* Genera Plantarum i. 54%, T Histoire des Plantes ii, 319 
