HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 391 
to Composite is only a wild guess without a particle of evidence in 
support of it; large herbaceous Composite are not in the habit 
of casting their leaves unwithered, so as to have become encased 
in mud unaltered in shape. Still less need I take notice of 
Martius’s Lychnophorites, which have since been more plausibly 
referred to large monocotyledons of the Vellozia type. And even 
Heer’s above-mentioned Miocene Composite achenes are doubted 
by some paleontologists, who contend that they are seeds of 
Apocynexe. Some, indeed, of Heer’s figures show the pappus not 
to be strictly terminal, but to proceed from an oblique or some- 
what lateral notch, which is unusual though not unknown in 
Composite (e. g. Tourneuxia) ; but many of the figures might be 
identified with more than one recent achene and pappus. 
In the absence of all direct evidence we are left to judge of the 
antiquity and origin of Composite from their comparative struc- 
ture and from their geographical distribution, as to both of which 
we have still much to learn, and in both which respects several of 
the boldest of modern hypothesists have neglected or been ignorant 
of much that is known. 
A general notion is prevalent, especially among French botan- 
ists, that Composite are at the summit of the scale of progression 
in thevegetable kingdom—that De Candolle's idea that the greatest 
perfection was to be sought for where, as in some Thalamiflorz, the 
essential parts of the flower, the petals, stamens, and carpels are 
the most distinct from each other, is altogether erroneous—that 
these Thalamiflore are, in fact, the nearest to the Monochlamydes, 
which commence from the base of the Dicotyledonous scale—and 
that the high degree of consolidation in the floral organs of 
Compositz is a strong proof of perfection and thence of a com- 
paratively recent origin. It seems very probable that these views 
may be correct ; yet, on the other hand, we must bear in mind that 
the numerous monotypic or oligotypic highly distinct genera con- 
fined respectively to the widely distant centres of preservation of 
the Mediterranean region, tropical and Southern Africa, Southern 
and Western Australia, Chili, the Mexican region, &c., point 
to a very wide dispersion of the original stock of the order 
at a very early period, when the physical configuration of the 
surface of the globe must have been very different from what it 
is now,—that this dispersion appears, indeed, to have been so early 
as to give time for the absolute fixation of secondary characters, 
which in most orders are very inconstant—and that, moreover, 
