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cliance very often that any given form, as we express it, has not 

 been taken as a type, and reverenced as a centre around which 

 ether forms must group. By getting wild Paeonies together we 

 may expect to understand the various forms and hybrids that 

 we now have in gardens. Under the figure of the so-called 

 Pceonia Bussi in the Botanical Magazine of 1830, it is remarked 

 that so many hybrids and varieties are now cultivated that it 

 would puzzle the most acute botanist to mark the limits of the 

 species. We have now, I dare say, a number of those plants to 

 deal with. I do not myself believe in much difficulty if we 

 prosecute a complete study. By following the lines I have 

 indicated we shall learn the value of characters, we shall avoid 

 the great difficulty that happens sometimes, of trying to dis- 

 tinguish botanically those plants that are essentially the same, 

 and, on the other hand, we shall recognise the importance of 

 differences that we may now consider slight. If Linnaeus had 

 had the complete view to which I refer, he could not, for instance, 

 have combined P. corallina with P. officinalis in one species. It 

 is the real knowledge of living plants that we must get, and then 

 we may go much further in a scientific manner than is possible 

 with dried plants. I believe the compilers of Continental Floras 

 might pay attention to us with great advantage when we have 

 accomplished what we propose to do. 



But now as to this classification. The latest, most valuable, 

 and complete monograph is that by Mr. Baker in the Gardeners' 

 Chronicle of 1884. He uses certain characters of the carpels for 

 the grouping of species, by which some closely related species 

 are separated, and others not related are brought together. Now 

 mature carpels are not always present or produced, and it 

 appeared to me that if a new arrangement could be made upon 

 characters generally present, and by which it would be possible 

 to keep allied species together, so as to bring their distinguished 

 features directly in contrast, that a study of the genus would be 

 facilitated. In the sub -genus Pceon, the only one that has more 

 than a single species, I take my divisional characters chiefly from 

 the leaves. Flowers do not afford strong botanical characters by 

 which to go very far. This does, I dare say, favour the view of 

 the " Genera Plantarum," that the species (of the date of writing) 

 might probably be reduced to four or five, and from this broad 

 view the groups I have made would no doubt, with some exceptions, 



