292 Stapf. — On the Sonerileae of Asia. 
indicated. The former might find its best place in a clavis 
which serves exclusively practical purposes, and may be as 
artificial as these require ; but the latter ought to prevail 
exclusively in the arrangement and the sequence of the de- 
scribed species. Thus not only the scientific value of such 
monographs would be highly increased and much trouble 
spared to those who subsequently take up the same order or 
a part of it for any special study, but it would likewise be to 
the benefit of those who use it for determination, as all the 
more closely allied forms would be kept together, which is 
quite impossible in an artificial arrangement. It was in com- 
pliance with this want of a more natural arrangement of the 
Sonerileae for my special object that the present paper origi- 
nated. 
There are ninety-eight species of Sonerileae described in 
Cogniaux’s monograph, to which I add the twenty species of 
Veprecella , which I consider to belong to this tribe, not to 
Oxysporeae. I further add seven new species, which were not 
taken up by Cogniaux or appear as varieties with him. Thus 
the number of Sonerileae known at present would be 125. 
As forty- two, or about one quarter, are African, only eighty- 
three come into consideration in this paper. They are all 
limited to tropical Asia, with the exception of S', papuana , 
Cogn., which is a native of Western New Guinea. 
The Asiatic Sonerileae, as described in Cogniaux’s mono- 
graph, belong to the genera Sonerila with seventy-two, Sarco - 
pyramis with one, Phyllagathis with two, and Brittenia with one 
species. Brittenia was described first in this monograph ; the 
other genera are admitted generally and even by H. Baillon, 
who inclines otherwise to rather a wholesale reduction of 
genera in Melastomaceae. I may premise here that I shall 
establish in this paper a fifth and a sixth genus on S. Fordii , 
Oliv., and on S. peperomiifolia, Oliv., species enumerated by 
Cogniaux in a special section, Anomalae. With this excep- 
tion, the limitation of the genera of the Asiatic Sonerileae 
does not need any discussion, and I can proceed forthwith to 
the classification of the species of Sonerila itself. These 
