ME. 6. BENTHAM ON GRAMI1IEJ3. 15 



meadows and pastures, on ornamental grasses, on the physiology 

 and properties of the Order, &c., to which I need not further 

 allude, my present object being merely to consider Graminefe with 

 reference to their classification and affinities. In a systematic 

 point of view, the great mistake of Linnaeus and the earlieir syste- 

 matists was the attempt to regard the whole spikelet as a single 

 flower, with a calyx and corolla to be compared with those of the 

 more perfect Monocotyledons. Robert Brown, with his usual 

 sagacity, pointed out this and other errors, and fiyst laid down 

 the true principles upon which the Order could best be divided into 

 tribes and genera ; but he unfortunately took up the idea that 

 the so-called lower and upper palese represented three outer seg- 

 ments of a perianth ; and although this theory lias 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 every 

 thing that has issued from the pen of Brown, that his explana- 

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

 the terminology adopted in generic and specific descriptions. 



Shortly after the publication of Brown's ' Prodromus,' Gra- 

 minese were taken up by several French botanists who had 

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

 and the "West Indies. Some of these had already been published 

 by Michaux or by Persoon, with more or less of assistance from 

 Louis Claude Eichard, to whom the credit of all that is good in 

 Persoon's ' Synopsis ' as well as in Mijchaux's ' Plora ' has been 

 attributed by several subsequent writers. The greatest value is 

 justly attached to all of the elder Eichard's observations in every 

 Order that he worked up ; and there is no doubt that such assist- 

 ance as he gave to tbose two works added much to their import- 

 ance ; but we know that he declined to attach his name to Persoon's 

 Synopsis, chiefly from an unwillingness to sanction tbe arrange- 

 ment under the Linnean system, and we are by no means assured 

 tbat there may not have been other details in both works which 

 he did not concur in. We therefore are not justified in fixing on 

 him a responsibility wbich he refused to undertake; and the 

 genera and species first published by Michaux or by Persoon 

 should be quoted as theirs and not Eichard's, except where 

 Eichard's name is expressly attached to them. Michaux's ' Plora ' 

 was published in 1803, the first volume of Persoon's ' Synopsis ' 

 in 1805, both of them therefore antecedent to Brown ; but two 



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