36 ME. G. BENTHAM ON GEAMINE^. 



Munro, though he had so nearly completed his descriptions of 

 species, and often indicated the sections to which he referred 

 them, had not yet definitively grouped them, leaving his manu- 

 scripts, for convenience of reference, in alphabetical order. We 

 have adopted three sections, founded on Nees's, which appear to us 

 well defined by positive characters — Uupaspalum, Gahrera, and 

 Anastrophm, subdividing the first, and largest, into four groups 

 or subsections, Anachyris, Opisthion, Pseudoceresia, and Oeresia, 

 much less marked in their outlines, but generally speaking fairly 

 natural. 



Etipaspalum comprises the great majority of the species, and is 

 distinguished by the spikelets strictly secund along the rhachis of 

 the spikes, with the back of the flowering glume and of the lower 

 empty one (when present) turned outwards — that is, away from 

 the rhachis or from its midrib ; whilst in Anastrophm, which ia- 

 cludes the remainder of the genus except the monotypic Cabrera, 

 the spikelets are almost distichous, and the back of the flowering 

 glume and of the lower empty one turned towards the midrib of 

 the rhachis. This distinction was specially relied upon by JN'ees 

 under the terms spicule aAversce and spioulce inverses, and followed 

 up by Doell. It is not alluded to byPournier with regard to the 

 Mexican Paspala ; but, if I understand correctly his words (Graiti. 

 Mex. p. vii), it nearly corresponds to the character he proposes 

 for the primary division of GrramineEe. 



Anachyris, the first subsection of lEupaspalum , is a purely arti- 

 ficial one, characterized solely by the having only a single empty 

 glume below the flowering one. It was first proposed as a genus 

 by Nees for the Paspalmn malacopliyllwm, Trin., which has all the 

 habit and floral and other characters of Paspalmn except this 

 single one ; and Pournier, apparently on this account, transfers 

 it to the tribe Oryeem. DoeU, however, reduces it to a section 

 of Paspalum under the name of HremacJiyrion, associating with it 

 a few other species, some of them evidently more nearly allied to 

 corresponding species of the section Opisthion than to each other. 

 And even the technical character is not always constant ; for in 

 P. {Eremachyrion) sesquiglume, Doell, a species closely allied to 

 P. {Opisthion) maritimum, Trin., I frequently find a minute outer 

 glume ; and, again, P. pallidum and P. eandidum, H. B. K., both 

 of which Doell places in Eremachyrion, are scarcely to be distin- 

 guished from each other except by the lowest empty glume absent 

 in the one, present in the other, as originally pointed out by 



