IMPOUTANT WOKKS. 3 



witli tliose of tlie more perfect ^louocotyledons. Robert Brown, 

 with liis usual sagacity, pointed out this and otlier errors, and first 

 hiid down tlie truo principles upon which the order could best be 

 divided into tribes and genera ; but he unfortunately took uj) the 

 idea that the so-called lower and upper pakw ro})resentetl three 

 outer segments of a perianth ; and although this theory has long 

 since been proved to be groundless, especially by Hugo Mohl, 

 whose views have been fully confirmed by all subsequent careful 

 observers, yet so great is the authority so deservedly attached to 

 everything that has issued from the pen of Brown, that his expla- 

 nation of the structure of the spikelet is still allowed to influence 

 the terminology adopted in generic and si)ecific descriptions. 



'• Shortly after the publication of Brown's ' Prodromus,' CJramin- 

 eie were taken up by several French botanists who had acquired 

 materials, rich for the time, chiefly from North America and the 

 AVest Indies. Some of these had already been ])ublished by Mi- 

 chaux or by Persoon, with more or less assistance from Louis 

 Claude Kichard, to whom the credit of all that is good in Per- 

 soon's ' Synopsis' as well as in Michaux's ' Flora' has been attribu- 

 ted by several subsequent writers. Michaux's 'Flora' Mas pub- 

 lished in 1803, the flrst volume of Persoou's 'Synopsis' in 1805, 

 both antecedent to Brown's. 



"Desvaux published his new genera, first by abstract in 1810, 

 and afterwards in full in the second 'Journal de Botanique' in 

 18i;5. Between these two periods Polisot de lieauvois published 

 his ' Agrostographieie' in which he undertook a general arrange- 

 ment of the whole order. 



" A few years later, three eminent botanists undertook the gen- 

 eral study of (Jramiiuw. Kunth at P'lris and afterwards at Berlin, 

 Trinius in (Jermany and afterwards at St. Petersburg, and Nees 

 von Esenbeck at Bonn, afterwards at Breslau, worked more or less 

 contemporaneously, but with little or no ('(mimunication with each 

 other. Kunth's ' Pevisio (Jraminium ' [* Pevision des (iraminces '] 

 jniblished in 18'-ii> and following years, is a work not only splendidly 

 illustrated, but renuirkable alike for the accuracy of detail in the 

 descriptions of species, us for several of the views given of their 



