DR. G. KING ON THE GENUS FICUS. 29 
common eatable Fig of Southern Europe. His second genus, 
Caprificus, contained only the Caprifig, which, as Linn®us had 
maintained more than a hundred years before, and as the most 
recent observations have demonstrated, is only the male of the 
plant of which the eatable Fig is the female. Gasparrini’s genus 
Tenorea contained only a single species, the F. pumila of Linnzus. 
His fourth genus, Urostigma, is the only one of his groups which 
has stood the test of experience; it contained all the species 
known to Gasparrini of the group as defined in the following 
pages. Into his fifth genus, called Visiania, Gasparrini put 
only a single plant, viz. F. elastica, a species referred by all sub- 
sequent writers to Urostigma. The sixth genus contained a 
single species, F. leucosticta, a species which I have referred to 
Covellia. Galoglychia, Gasparrini's seventh genus, consisted of 
two species, which, being American, lie beyond the scope of the 
present paper. To Gasparrini’s eighth genus, Covellia, he 
referred only a single species, of which he says he had neither 
seen male flowers nor ripe seeds. 
During the same year (1844) in which Gasparrini’s new 
classification was published, Miquel, in the ‘Ann. des Sciences 
Naturelles,’ série 3, i. p. 31, working chiefly on some of 
Roxburgh's descriptions, suggested that the species described 
in the ‘ Flora Indica’ of that author ought not to be considered 
as forming a natural homogeneous group, but as divisible into 
very distinct sections; and in the same paper he proceeds to 
distribute twenty-five of them into the two sections Carica and 
Sycocarpus, while on one of the species (.F. hispida, syn. F. oppositi- 
folia) he founds the new genus Sycomorphe. The basis of Miquel’s 
(as of Gasparrini’s) classification was the structure and disposition 
of the flowers. Three years later (i. e. in 1847) Miquel began to 
publish, in Hooker’s ‘ London Journal of Botany,’ a monograph 
of all the species of the old genus Ficus, and as the result of his 
extended study of it he established the following genera :— 
Urostigma, including 167 species ; Pharmacosycea, including 12 
species ; Pogonotrophe, including 16 species ; Sycomorus, inclu- 
ding 12 species; Ficus, including 188 species; Covellia, inclu- 
ding 31 species; Synacza, including 2 species. These seven 
genera were formed solely on characters obtained from the 
structure and disposition of the flowers, the number of the 
stamens and the character of the stigma forming prominent 
features in the diagnoses. Some of the characters were founded 
