448 D. Prnin — Some additional Legumirosee. [No. 2, 



root as might enable one to decide. The rediscovery of Loureiro's plant in Cochin 

 China ought to be easy, but till it takes place the writer prefers to let Derris pinnata 

 remain a doubtful species.* 



15. Dalbergia tamarindifolia Boxb. Hort. Beng. 53. 

 This species is very common in the Andamans, in addition to the localities 

 mentioned in the F. B. I. ; it occurs even on outlying members of the group like 

 Barren Island. The description in Boxb. Flor. Ind. iii. 233. as to leaves and flowers 

 applies to this species ; as to fruit it applies to D. Milletti. 



156. Dalbergia burmanica Prain; a tree; leaflets 7-9, oblong- 

 obtuse glabrous, flowers in congested sessile axillary panicles with 

 corymbose branches, pedicels short, petal-claws as long as the calyx, 

 pod unknown. Amerimnon burmanicum Prain MSS. 



Burma ; Ruby Mines district, King's Collectors ! 



A tree 25 feet high or higher, young branches and leaves finely puberulous, soon 

 glabrous. Leaves 4 in. long, leaflets moderately firm, 1*5-2 in. long, stipules small 

 soon deciduous. Panicles sessile 1-2 in. long, the branches densely brown-pubescent ; 

 pedicels shorter than the calyx, the bracteoles at its base narrow lanceolate. Calyx 

 $ in., pubescent, teeth short obtuse. Corolla purple, 2-3 times the length of calyx, 

 blade of standard oblong. Stamens 9 monadelphous. Ovules 1-2. 



A very distinct species with leaflets like those of D. velutina but glabrous and 

 less numerous, and with small not large stipules ; combined with this we have an 

 inflorescence exactly like that of D. tamarindifolia and flowers only distinguishable 



* In connection with this genus Kuntze allows his desire for " pure priority " to 

 carry him away so completely that be would use the name D. ferruginea (Eoxb. Fl. 

 Ind. iii. 228) in place of D. stipulacea (Roxb. Flor. Ind. iii. 233), because it is given 

 on an earlier page. D. stipulacea Roxb. being submerged, he is able to resuscitate the 

 otherwise inadmissible D. stipulata (Wall. Cat. 5868) and to employ it instead of 

 D. velutina (Benth. PI. Jungh. 255) a name proposed by Bentham in order to obviate 

 the trouble of having a " stipulacea " and a " stipulata " in the same genus. As 

 Kuntze is at the same time replacing the name Dalbergia by the older but quite 

 unfamiliar one Amerimnon, he thus affords himself an opportunity of upsetting all 

 the old synonymy ; Dalbergia stipulacea becomes Amerimnon ferrugineum Kuntze ; 

 our D. velutina becomes A. stipulatum Kuntze ; our D. tamarindifolia becomes A. pinna- 

 turn Kuntze. Even if this were final it would be, in the writer's humble opinion, 

 bibliography gone mad. But the worst of it is that it is anything but final. Kuntze's 

 want of care in comparing the account that Loureiro gives of Derris pinnata has 

 made him assume the responsibility of the name Amerimnon pinnatum as designating 

 Dalbergia tamarindifolia. As Derris pinnata cannot, unless Loureiro blundered in 

 his description — and this Kuntze has no right to assume — be Dalbergia tamarindifolia 

 at all Kuntze's name must be altered by the next bibliographic purist. More extra- 

 ordinary still our bibliographer errs in his own particular province. The names 

 D. stipulacea and D. ferruginea were not first published on pages 233 and 228 

 respectively of the third volume of Roxburgh's Flora Indica. They were issued first 

 in the Hortus Bengalensis, D. stipulacea being published on p. 53 and D. ferruginea 

 not till p. 98 of that work. So that after all, by Kuntze's own " rules, " D. stipu- 

 lacea is the prior name and the next " bibliographer " is recommended the happy 

 task of undoing Kuntze's alterations. 



