PRELIMINARY TREATISE. 
Having been requested to prepare for the press a second 
edition of a treatise, which I published in 1821, on the 
plants included previously under the genera Amaryllis, 
Crinum, Pancratium, and Cyrtanthus, I have felt that it 
would be desirable to render it as complete as the further 
information I now possess concerning them will enable me, 
though it is in some respects still defective, and it was repre- 
sented to me that it would be preferable to extend the scheme 
of my work to the whole natural order of Amaryllideae ; 
but, conformably with the latest practice, 1 have adopted the 
superior term Amaryllidaceae, and confined the former name 
to a subordinate portion. I have to regret however that, 
not having contemplated a further publication, I have 
neglected during the last fifteen years opportunities of noting 
down points, which I cannot now readily ascertain. In 
pursuance of my present undertaking, it was a principal 
object to arrange according to their affinities the different 
kinds of plants of which the order consists, a task by no 
means easy, because the concatenation of vegetables does 
not proceed in a straight line, and perhaps the truest arrange- 
ment would be in a circle, with lateral lines from some 
points in the circumference either falling into it at some 
other point, or branching off* to meet some other order. For 
this reason, although a consecutive arrangement is necessary 
for convenience, it cannot be expected that the concatenation 
should be perfect. In proceeding with such a work, the 
first point to be considered is what plants are comprised 
under the natural order Amaryllidaceae, and what are its 
essential characteristics. A great difficulty occurs here at 
the outset; for although the system of classing plants by what 
modern botanists have called natural orders is entirely the 
fashion of the present day, every writer who has treated of 
this order refers to Dr. Brown’s Prodromus for the definition, 
and on reference to the work of that most distinguished 
botanist, on whose accuracy in all points that he has tho- 
roughly investigated we may peculiarly rely, we find a defi- 
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