ME. G. BEKTHAJU: ON GEAMlNEiE. 25 



means pretend to assert it as a proved fact. If the suggestion be 

 confirmed, we might be justified in designating as a neutral flower 

 that in which the palea alone, or the palea and lodicules without 

 stamens or pistil, are developed ; but we must not include in the 

 flower the bract or glume which subtends it. 



In all cases the palea, whatever its origin, is called upon in con- 

 junction with the subtending glume to perform more or less of the 

 functions of the deficient or absent perianth, and thus acquires a 

 certain fixity of character, and requires mention in all full generic 

 characters. The lodicules, on the other hand, are generally rudi- 

 mentary representatives of suppressed organs having lost^all func- 

 tional powers, and their slight variations in form or consistency 

 are generally not even of specific importance, and they only re- 

 quire mention in generic characters in the few cases where they 

 have retained a greater and more constant development. 



There is much of interest in the question of the geographical 

 distribution of Grasses as compared with that of Orchidese, and in 

 the consideration of the causes which have produced the diifer- 

 ences observed in the two Orders, amongst which perhaps the very 

 different agencies through which cross-fertilization is effected may 

 be most infiuential ; these questions may have also more or less 

 bearing on tribual and generic arrangement ; and there are nume- 

 rous observations which I should have been desirous of recording. 

 This, however, would lead to speculations which it would not be 

 safe to indulge in without a far more detailed and closer study of 

 ascertained facts than I have time to carry out ; and I feel obliged 

 to confine myself on the present occasion to the purely systematic 

 consideration of real or supposed affinities and diversities. 



The division of the Order into tribes and subtril)es is a matter 

 of exceptional difficulty. Whatever tribes have been proposed, 

 whatever characters have been assigned to them, there have 

 always been more or less ambiguous forms uniting them and 

 preventing the restricting them within absolutely definite limits. 

 We are obliged in Graminese, more perhaps than in any other 

 Order, to rely upon combinations of characters, allowing for 

 occasional exceptions in every one of our groups, preferring 

 those which experience has shown to present the fewest aberra- 

 tions. Tollowing up these views, none of the general divisions 

 of the Order hitherto proposed have proved to be more natural 

 or more definite than Brown's original primary one into two 

 great groups or suborders — Fanicacees, in which the tendency to 



