16 Mte. &. fiEin^HiH Oit GBAMlNEiE. 



other special agrostologists, Desvaux and Palisot de Beauvois, bad 

 ample time to avail themselves of Brown's work. Desvaux pub- 

 lished his new genera in a m«moir which first appeared in abstract 

 in the ' Nouveau Bulletin de la Societe Philomathique ' for 1810, 

 and afterwards in full in the first volume of his second ' Journal 

 de Botanique ' in 1813. Between these two periods Palisot de 

 Beauvois published his 'Agrostographie,' in which he undertook 

 a general arrangement of the whole Order, with definitions as well 

 of the old-established genera as of a large number of new ones, 

 including those of his contemporary Desvaux. The majority of 

 these genera have since been adopted ; but his arrangement of 

 them was far too technical and his characters often so vague, that 

 they could in most instances scarcely have been identified, were it 

 not for the names of the species which he refers to them and for 

 the really good analytical drawings accompanying his work. As 

 it is, several of his names have been misapplied by subsequent 

 botanists, who have not paid sufficient attention to, or have not 

 seen, those drawings. 



A few years later, three eminent botanists undertook the 

 general study of Graminese. Kunth at Paris and afterwards at 

 Berlin, Trinius in Germany and afterwards at St. Petersburg, 

 and Nees von Esenbeck at Bonn, afterwards at Breslau, worked 

 more or less contemporaneously, but with little or no communi- 

 cation with each other. Kunth's 'Eevisio Graminum,' published 

 in 1829 and following years, is a work not only splendidly illus- 

 trated, but remarkable alike for the accuracy of detail in the descrip- 

 tions of species, as for several of the views given of their structure 

 and arrangement. This work, however, is so costly as to be acces- 

 sible to few botanists, and the more generally known first two 

 volumes of his ' Enumeratio Plantarum,' containing the Grasses, 

 were unfortunately a far too hasty compilation. He had entered 

 into an agreement with old Cotta for the preparation of a com- 

 pact Synopsis Plantarum on the plan of Persoon's, and had 

 received a considerable sum of money on account of the work ; 

 but wlien it came to the actual drawing it up, Cotta insisted upon 

 its being arranged according to the Linn88an system, which Kunth 

 would no more agree to than did the elder Eichard in the case of 

 Persoon. The Synopsis or Enumeratio was therefore still in 

 abeyance when old Cotta died ; and his successors, not caring for 

 the special plan adopted, insisted on an immediate return for the 

 money advanced ; and I several times heard Kunth himself much 



