30 DR. G. KING ON THE GENUS FICUS. 
on undoubted errors of observations, as, for example, when the 
female flowers of Covellia and those of both males and females 
in Synecia are described as without perigonium. This arrange- 
ment was subsequently abandoned by its author, and Miquel 
himself, twenty years later (in 1867), published in the Ann. 
"Mus. Lugd.-Bat. vol. iii., a rearrangement of Ficus. In this new 
arrangement Miquel abandoned the idea of breaking up the genus 
Ficus into genera, and substituted for that scheme one in which 
the reunited genus is subdivided into six subgenera, as follows :— 
Urostigma, with 143 Old-World, 110 American species, and 21 
of doubtful nativity; Pharmacosyce, with 18 species, all American; 
Erythrogyne, with 2 species; Synecia, with 3 species ; Eusyce, 
with 209 species; Covellia, with 48 species. In this rearrange- 
ment three of Miquel's old genera— Urostigma, Pharmacosyce, 
and Covellia—appear, with enlarged and slightly altered cha- 
racters, as subgenera. The name of a fourth old genus, Syn«cia, 
is kept up for à subgenus; but the name only, for a totally 
different set of characters are given to the subgenus from those 
which characterized the genus ; whilst two entirely new subgenera, 
viz. Erythrogyne and Eusyce, are established. The total number 
of species included in this second enumeration of Miquel’s is 
405 Old-World species, 128 American species, and 22 species of 
doubtful nativity. In this second arrangement of Miquel’s the 
flowers alone are not trusted to entirely for the subgeneric 
characters, but account is also taken of the form and situation of 
the receptacles, of the form of the leaves, and of general habit. 
In the ‘ Genera Plantarum’ of the late Mr. Bentham and Sir 
J. D. Hooker, four of Miquel’s subgenera, viz. Urostigma, Eusyce, 
Synecta, and Covellia, are admitted. Pharmacosyce (a diandrous 
group of Urostigma-like species) is accepted with doubt, and the 
sixth, Erythrogyne, is suppressed. But these eminent botanists 
admit that the sections which they adopt from Miquel are too 
loosely defined, and they commend the whole genus to the 
attention of the monographer. This advice, together with the 
kind personal encouragement of Sir Joseph Hooker, induced me 
to carry through an attempt which I had begun a year or two 
previously to elucidate the structure and affinities of the species 
of Ficus found in the Indo-Malayan region. 
The flowers of the genus Ficus are collected in a cymose 
manner on a fleshy axis, which, by the curving upwards of its 
circumferential part (or organic base), is converted into a kind 
po. 
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