INTRODUCTION 



27 



all of the Amboina material extant, doubtless many other obscure 

 points regarding Rumphius's species could be elucidated, which 

 in the following critical consideration I have been obliged to 

 interpret from published descriptions alone. Doctor Robinson's 

 four and one-half months of field work in Amboina were insuf- 

 ficient in which to secure the necessary material and data to settle 

 all of the doubtful points in connection with the forms de- 

 scribed by Rumphius from Amboina material alone, and he had 

 no opportunity to visit neighboring islands to search for special 

 material that might serve to determine the status of Rumphius's 

 rather numerous extra-Amboina species. 



ERRORS IN THE INTERPRETATION OF RUMPHIAN SPECIES 



The early botanical authors, such as Linnaeus, Burman f ., Lour- 

 eiro, Lamarck, and numerous others, had but a slight conception 

 of the principles of geographic distribution of plants, and ac- 

 cordingly in their reductions of Rumphius's species many grave 

 errors were committed. Very often in the early literature one 

 finds the illustrations of an Amboina plant quoted as an exact 

 synonym of a species of Indo-China, when in reality the two are 

 totally different and not infrequently have been found to repre- 

 sent different genera. It is not at all certain that in quoting 

 illustrations of various species as synonyms Linnaeus and his 

 contemporaries and immediate successors intended them as exact 

 synonyms ; it would seem, in many cases at least, that the cita- 

 tions of illustrations as synonyms was intended to convey to other 

 botanists some conception of what the species was like, and not 

 necessarily to indicate that it was an exact equivalent of the 

 species under which it was cited. 



In the first two or three decades following the death of 

 Linnaeus systematists were conservative in the matter of describ- 

 ing new species. There was a very strong tendency to refer 

 specimens to species already named by Linnaeus, rather than 

 to describe material, even from distant and relatively unknown 

 parts of the world, as new. Thus we find Loureiro in his Flora 

 Cochinchinensis, published in 1790, erroneously referring num- 

 erous Cochin-China specimens to Linnean species and likewise 

 attempting to match his Cochin-China material with the Amboina 

 species described and figured by Rumphius, apparently on the 

 assumption that if a plant grew in Cochin-China, it should also 

 grow in Amboina. In Loureiro's work there are scores of cases 

 where the Rumphian name and figure are quoted as an exact 

 synonym of a Cochin-China species described by him as new. 



