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336 MR. G. BENTHAM ON THE MIMOSEiE. 



Mimosese would scarcely "be considered specific — a disproportionate treatment prol)ably 

 aggravated by the circumstance of the small number of botanists who have access to good 

 working-materials in Cassia and Mimoseae, whilst every beginner has Compositge at hand 

 to exercise his ingenuity in discovering minute differences in the pappus, the bracts, and 

 other reduced organs, in indumentums or in stigmatic papillae. 



After Linnaeus, the subdivision of his Mimosa into several distinct genera was first 

 proposed by Willdenow, as based chiefly on the fruit ; and his views have been generally 

 followed out. Poiret, in the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia, adopted his genera as sub- 

 genera of Mimosa, which he still retained in its substantive collective character. Des- 

 fontaines, in the third edition of the Catalogue of the Paris Garden, united most of 

 Willdenow's genera with Acacia. De Candolle, in 1825, with materials but little better 

 than those which Willdenow had at his disposal, and in the absence of specimens of a 

 large proportion of that author's species, reinstated his genera, adding a few exceptional 

 species as monotypic or small genera. Martins, working on a limited number of Brasi- 



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lian species, without any general survey of the group, proposed several additional genera 

 founded upon Willdenow's principles ; and when, in 1842, I undertook the publication 

 of the rich collections, chiefly American, of the Berlin, the Hookerian, my own, and a 

 few other herbaria, I found the limits and circumscriptions of the genera so confused and 

 vague, that I thought it necessary to remodel them, ah initio, upon principles somewhat 

 different from those which had till then prevailed, giving especially a first rank to cha- 

 racters derived from the androecium, which had been in a great measure disregarded. 

 Twenty-seven years have now elapsed since I completed a series of Synopses in Hooker's 

 Journals ; and my genera appear to have been favourably received by the gen erality of 

 botanists, with the exception, however, of Grisebach, who, misled sometimes by mis- 

 matched specimens, or by misunderstanding some of the characters I had given, has 

 reverted to the preeminence of carpological over staminal characters. Here and there 

 also individual botanists who have met with pods apparently different from those of 

 their congeners, have proposed monotypic genera, upon grounds which appear to me 

 insuflScient. On the other hand, I have within these twenty years had the opportunity 

 of inspecting a large number of typical species in the herbaria of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, 

 Munich, Geneva, and Turin, and, on the occasion of working up the suborder for the 

 Flora Brasiliensis, found reason to modify several of the details of my former Synopsis, 

 to confirm a few of the genera about which I had some doubts, to give greater precision 

 to the characters of others by the transfer of a few species to which, from insufficient 

 specimens, I had assigned a wrong place, and especially to clear up a large number of 

 doubtful synonyms. I have therefore thought the following general revision, with 

 short characters for the whole of the species, might not be unserviceable to future inves- 

 tigators, to whom I must now leave the task of dissipating the obscurity which still pre- 

 vails over a considerable number of them. I would also commence by a few observations 

 on the generic characters I have adopted, and on geographical distribution. 



The prunary importance I attached to the staminal character appears to have stood 

 the test of subsequent experience. No ambiguous species have presented themselves to 

 mvalidato the delimitation of the three great groups, nearly equal in point of numbers : 



