22 ME. &. BENTHAM ON GEAMINEa!. 



edition of Harvey's ' G-enera of South-African Hants.' He had 

 also amassed an immense number of notes on synonyms he had 

 verified, on points of structure he had ascertained, &c., as mate- 

 rials for the general work he was preparing for DeCandoUe's 

 Monographs. His death has extinguished all such hopes as we 

 had entertained; and although liis notes, mostly dispersed in his 

 herbarium or in the gramineous boots of his library, are now left 

 at our disposal at Kew, yet he had unfortunately not committed 

 to paper his ideas on the limits and distinctive characters of tribes, 

 genera, and subgenera not included in the South-African Flora ; 

 and these I could only gather from his conversation and corre- 

 spondence. My own preparation for the work I have now under- 

 taken was chiefly the study of European grasses for my ' Hand- 

 book of the British Mora,' and of Old- World Graminese generally 

 for the ' J?lora Hongkongensis ' and ' Mora Australiensis,' whenl 

 was in constant correspondence relating to them with Greneral 

 Munro. Having now had to work also upon American forms and 

 to examine with more detail the South-European, Oriental, and 

 African ones, I have had to modify in some respects the views I 

 had expressed as to the relative importance and constancy of some 

 of the characters, and partially to rearrange some of the tribes 

 and subtribes, although the general principles of classifi.cation 

 ■which had been suggested by General Munro have only been con- 

 firmed by further experience. 



I have already, in mypajjer on the classification of Monocoty- 

 ledons (Journ. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) xv. p. 513), entered so fully into my 

 reasons for adopting as to G-ramineas a terminology in accordance 

 with the observations of Mohl and in harmony with that followed 

 as to Cyperacess, that I need not repeat them on the present occa- 

 sion. I would only add a few words in further reply to the objec- 

 tion repeatedly made to me that the falling off together of the 

 flowering glume and palea (commonly called the two paless) en- 

 closijig the fruit, is a strong evidence of their being really homo- 

 logous. But this is a mistake. A careful observation will show 

 that they never do both together fall away from the rbachilla or 

 axis of the spikelet ; it is the rhachilla itself that breaks up, a por- 

 tion of which always remains attached to the glume and palea and 

 keeps them together round the fruit. In most Panicacese, espe- 

 cially in AndropogonesB, the whole spikelet with the empty glumes 

 as well as the flowering one falls off with the fruit. In the majo- 

 rity of Poacese the disarticulation takes place between each two 



