anodojjtj: 



185 



ti^Zfr PWa b ° tan!8t , aPPearS t0 have fo,Wed llim > «~Pt Sm.th, whose d, -crip 



Ti !' 9 „ It? T" eV1 '? nCe ° f COm P ilati - «"" of stud/of specUaT gZ^ 



3 si 1 ? ?•. -r *r*» ** for p./—: ,i L ::/;;™:: d = 



(1785) placed the Swiss form of the 



i 



species under P. /«;„««, a fc >. Ilaller's criticism of 



Oeders figure only succeeds in showing that his specimens were inade-.uate, and „„ own 



figure ls not partrcularly instructive. Willbenow (1800) is doubtftd about ref , , ri , ' , " 

 Norwegian plant to P. flammea; neither he, nor Allioni or Lamakck (1778) before him nor 



Po IEET (1804) or DeCakdolle (1805) after him, hesi ( „te ab„ut refi.ring tin S 



to Lmnaos^ P. flammea. Retzius (JVor. *W., ed. i, 1779) expr sed for the IU* 

 time the opinion that the plant figured by Oeder was specifically dittinn alike, from 

 P. flammea and from P. fen*, and though Hjwcke (1788) in a very lengthy Mini 

 — eful article rebuts this opinion of Retzius, and insists on the identity of this 



species with P. flammea, Retzius declined to agree with l.im, and leaver ted (l?9ftl hi, 

 opinion that it may be a good species. Unfortunately Retzius did n. formulate 

 his opinion by providing the species thus recognised by him with a definition and a 



name. Hamcke's description is extremely accurate, but curiously ho omits to ment 

 the hairs on the anterior pair of filaments which his Judenburg specimens miut have 

 exhibited, and which after all afford the most palpable diagnostic mark between this 

 species and P. flammea. It is somewhat strange that Walpers, whoso citations are as 

 a rule so correct, attributes the article by Hamcke to Wulfen, and places it in vol i 

 instead of in vol. ii of JucquirCs Collectanea; p. 70, vol i, which he actually quotes is 

 occupied by accounts of Sisymbrium pannonicum and Turrilis Ursula by Jacquin himself 

 Even if the citation of a wrong volume be only an oversight in reading proof the 

 misquotation of authority still remains. Retzius' view was adopted by Vahi 1806;, who 

 described the Norwegian form of the species under the name P. Ocdcri. Waiii.imh . 

 does not seem to have been aware of the appearance of Vahl's name in 1812, when 

 he described the same form as P. flammea vak. major, and probably was r ill iirnorant ( 

 that name in the following year, when he gave the name P. versicolor to the 3 wiss form 



of the species. Haktmann, who in 1814 was of opinion that Oeder's Scandinavian plant 



in 



as 



was the same as P. flammea, noted in 1818 that it is really conspecific with the Swiss 

 P. versicolor. What is of greater interest for us is to know that when Ifartmsnn wrot<- 

 1818 he was aware that this species (P. versicolor) was known to Danish botanic 

 P. Oederi, but there is nothing to show whether his preference for Wahlen- 

 berg's name over Vahl's was because he thought that Vahl's name had been published 

 between 1813 and 1818, or because of a laxity then prevalent in the matter of 

 recognising priority. Hartmann's view received the warrant of Steven's judgment in 1823. 

 though there is no indication that Steven knew of the prior publication of a name for 



the Norwegian plant, and Steven's limitation was adopted by the elder Reichenbach in 

 the following year. In the same year (1823) Sprengel gave a valueless verbal diagnosis 

 between the two forms, and Nyman so late as 1854 kept them apart in the Sylloge 

 Florw Europce. He is, so far as I can discover, the only author who has hitherto given 

 the true date of publication of the name P. Oederu It is therefore somewhat perplexing 

 to find in 1880 the same author in his Conspectus according a subordinate position to 

 what he had himself already shown was the older name. No author besides Sprengel 

 and Nyman appears to have kept the two forms apart, and indeed in 1824 Wahlenberir 

 himself had assented to the identity of the Scandinavian form with his own Swiss 

 species. He quotes Hartmann as already having expressed this view \ but, though he 



Ann. Roy. Box. Gtard. Calcutta, Vol. Ill 



