990 MR. G. BENTHAM ON COMPOSITA. 
ligulate, with a pentamerous spreading lamina, truncate and 5- 
toothed at the end. The anthers have the normal terminal appen- 
dage, and are sagittate at the base, with acute auricles often pro- 
duced into a short point. The style-branches are those of the 
female florets of other tribes, slender, acute or almost obtuse, 
papillose but not hirsute, sometimes rather broader and slightly 
flattened. The achenes are various, usually narrow or flat, and 
sometimes produced into a slender beak. The pappus usually with 
one or more rows of simple or plumose set ; but sometimes it con- 
sists of thin pales or of few sete or awns, or is entirely 
wanting. 
IV. HISTORY AND GEoanAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 
The ancient history of Composite must be more purely con- 
jectural than that of many other large groups of plants. The 
geological record is remarkably scanty ; but in the case of the 
members of this order, the absence of their remains is no proof 
of their non-existence at various geological periods. They are 
very rarely aquatic; and a comparatively small number only are 
to be met with on the borders of such waters as are wont to ac- 
cumulate stores of organic remains ; nor yet do they shed a profu- 
sion of leaves likely to be carried to any such hoarding-places. The 
great mass of them live, die, and are thoroughly consumed, without 
leaving a single fragment to serve as evidence or indication to 
future generations. It is only here and there that the winds 
appear to have carried an achene, by means of its pappus, to some 
place of deposit; and thus it is that Oswald Heer found in the 
upper miocene tertiary deposits of central Europe various im- 
pressions which he refers, on plausible grounds, to Composite. 
He is also probably justified in his conjecture that the great 
majority of them belong to Cichoriaces, two or three to Cyna- 
roidez, and that one is probably the achene of an aquatic Bidens. 
All this, if well founded, would show that at that tertiary epoch 
Composite existed in Europe of the same general character as 
those which are now to be met with. It would seem to prove 
that they had then already attained that highly differentiated 
character they now possess, and consequently must have been 
already of very old date, although they had left no previous record 
of their existence which has as yet been exposed to our observa- 
tion. I can find no further reliable notice of fossil Composite ; for 
Isay nothing of Massalonghi’s Silphidiwm-leaves; their reference 
