410 MR. G. BENTHAM ON COMPOSIT®. 
ficient, connect the Asteroides with the Anthemides. The 
genera are all small; seven are from the Old World, of which three 
(Myriactis 5 species, Grangea 4 species, and Dichrocephala 5 spe- 
cies) have a wide range over Asia and Africa; whilst four monotypic 
ones are local, or nearly so, Rhynchospermum and Cyathocline being 
exclusively Asiatic, and Ceruana and Microtrichia limited to Africa. 
The two American genera Aphanostephus, 3 species, and Egletes, 
5 species, have not thrown out any immediately divergent genera 
around them; the connexion of the former with the Bellis group 
and thence with typical Asters has been already mentioned. Eyletes 
is remarkable in its close resemblance in every respect to the 
African and Asiatie Grangeas, excepting in the single generic cha- 
racter the presence of the ray-flowers, which in Africa are always 
deficient—a character which in other genera is frequently variable 
even in one species, but here apparently constant and geogra- 
phical. 
5. The Solidago type.— We have here about 320 species in 24 
genera, all nearly allied to each other and only distinguished 
technically from Aster and its immediate allies by the homochro- 
mous florets, the ray-florets, when present, being yellow, like the 
disk—a character in general of so little value that it cannot, in 
Senecio for instance, be admitted as of more than specific import- 
ance, and yet is here accompanied by so much of habit and certain 
prevalent, although not absolute, peculiarities, that it is univer- 
sally acquiesced in, notwithstanding the frequent difficulty in as- 
certaining it. The erroneous appreciation of colour in dried spe- 
cimens has led to many mistakes, and there are several groups 
where the rays are deficient ; in these cases it is only by compli- 
cated affinities in other respects that the place of a plant can be 
determined. In general, the rayless species and genera belong to 
the Solidago group; but this absence of ray occurs sometimes 
even in Aster itself; and experience has now shown that the 
European Linosyris and American Bigelowia, united by some 
of the most eminent synantherologists, belong, the one to the 
Aster, the other to the Solidago group. And here geographical 
distribution may be called in aid. The great seat of the group is 
extratropical America, North and South, with a few intermediate 
Andine species. The large genus Solidago itselfis almost entirely 
North American and extratropical, but represented by one vari- 
able species in extratropical South America, and by another at 
least as variable in the north temperate regions of the Old World, 
