*' The tirst botanists in this country were always in 
doubt concerning Halesia diptera, and the herbarium of 
Linnaeus, when it arrived, was anxiously consulted upon 
this subject, but proved to contain nothing certain except 
the fhiit, the leaves pasted by it beit^ full-grown Styrax 
grandifolium." 
It therefore appears, that as far as Linnneus is con- 
cerned, little hope is to be entertained of ascertaining from 
his writings what he intended by H. diptera. 
Willdenow, however, was acquainted with a plant which 
he considered referable to H. diptera, and which was cul- 
tivated in the Berlin Garden. This plant he describes as 
having leaves green on each side, twice as large as thos6 
of H. tetraptera, and very soft, with minute hairs on the 
under side. Pursh adopts the definition and account of 
Willdenow, only adding that the flowers are larger than in 
H. tetraptera. Nuttall makes no remark upon either Will- 
denow or Pursh, but observes, that the species is found 
occasionally round Savannah, in Georgia. 
It IS evident, then, that these writers, who, as we have 
seen, are the only modern authority for H. diptera, could 
not have intended to describe the present plant, which 
has leaves no larger than those of H. tetraptera, and 
glaucous beneath ; ami flowers not only smaller than in 
that species, but having a different mode of inflorescence, 
an included style, and large ovate teeth to the calyx ; all 
of which latter characters would necessarily have been 
rejfharked by such acute observers. 
The H. parviflora to which it appears to us that the 
present [)lant is referable, is a species unknown to Pursh, 
who only adopts it from Michaux, and said by Nuttall to 
be scarcely distinct from H. tetraptera. 
That from the latter our plant is very different, an 
inspection of our figure will render obvious. The leaves 
are, when young, entire, or nearly so, becoming toothed 
only as they grow old, and not being regularly denti- 
culate in their earliest state as in H. tetraptera. The 
flowers are produced at the same time as the leaves, and 
appear in loose leafy pendulous p^nicled racemes, not in 
naked foscicles ; the calyx has four , ovate teetJi, whicli in 
