342 MR. G. BENTHAM ON COMPOSIT X. 
visions for cross fertilization originally pointed out by Cassini, and 
with more or less of recognition forming the basis of the systems 
of classification of Lessing and De Candolle, but more or less 
neglected or ignored by Don, by Schultz Bipontinus, and by most of 
the minor more specific synantherologists. Of the two theorists 
I allude to, Prof. F. Hildebrand, of Bonn, and Federigo Delpino, 
of Florence, the former has published, in the last volume of the 
‘Nova Acta Nature Curiosorum,’ elaborate observations, accom- 
panied by excellent illustrations, of the fecundating apparatus of 
thirty species of Composite belonging to most of the principal 
groups of the order. In the general considerations which follow, 
he endeavours to show that in Composite, at least, all observations 
indicate that unisexuality where it exists has proceeded from 
hermaphroditism, and that the primitive parent of the order had 
capitula consisting entirely of protandrous hermaphrodite florets— 
a conclusion which may be a correct one, but for which the data 
at hand are wonderfully few. The same writer has a paper in the 
last number of the ‘ Botanische Zeitung’ on the meaus of dis- 
persion supplied by the fruits of Composite, upon which I may 
have to make some observations when speaking of geographical 
distribution. 
Delpino, in his * Studi sopra un legnaggio anemofilo delle Com- 
poste, amidst many shrewd and instructive observations on the 
dichogamic arrangements of Composite in the comparatively few 
species he has had the opportunity of studying, supplements them 
rather largely from the sources of imagination. Attaching the 
greatest importance to the Darwinian distinction he has on 
various occasions worked out, between anemophilous and zoidiophi- 
lous plants (those which effect cross fertilization by the agency of 
winds or by the agency of insects), he considers that evidence 
derived from this character alone is suffieient to prove descent 
and affinity, without taking into account the numerous cases 
alluded to by Darwin, and some of which are mentioned by 
Delpino himself in this very paper, where important variations in 
this respect occur in different species of one and the same genus. 
His genealogical tree of Artemisiacee, from Campanulacez down 
to Xanthium spinosum, his statements, as proved facts, that 
Campanulacee transmitted hermaphroditism through Lobeliacee 
to their descendants the Composite, that Composite inherited pro- 
terandry from Lobeliacee, but acquired in many cases unisexuality 
during subsequent generations, are mere conjectures. So in pro- 
