432 MR. G. BENTHAM ON COMPOSITS. 
remarkably distinct. As a whole the tribe is essentially American, 
and chiefly tropical or subtropical; but some genera have been 
early enough in the warmer regions of the Old World to have 
there established distinet species or sections, a very few small or 
monotypie ones from Afriea or Madagascar or East India suffi- 
ciently differentiated to be maintained as genera (Micractis, 
Epallage, Guizotia, Glossocardia, Microlecane, Glossogyne). The 
development and usual persistence of the pale: of the receptacle 
or bracts subtending the individual florets, the tailless anthers, 
and the pappus, when present, consisting of few rigid awns or 
pales, some of them more directly corresponding to the primary 
ribs of the achenes, are its principal characters. The style is very 
variable. The order is slightly connected through Lagascea with 
Vernoniacez, through Ambrosiee with Anthemides, through 
Madiew with Helenies, and through a few Verbesinee with Inu- 
loidew (Buphthalmex); but the delimitation is rarely doubtful. 
Some of the structural characters, as well as the dispersion of 
several genera over the warmer regions of both the New and the 
Old World, seem to point this out as containing some of the most 
ancient forms of the order. 
Among the numerous subdivisions which have been proposed, 
we have thought that ten might be maintained as subtribes, 
although very unequal in point of numbers and geographical 
range. As in the Inuloidex, we will take them in detail in their 
systematic sequence. 
1. Lagascea, a small genus of about seven species, is so distinct 
from all others as to require separation as a subtribe, and even the 
tribe it should be classed under is uncertain. Its style is that of 
Vernoniaces, where it has been technically associated with Zle- 
phantopus amongst genera with glomerate uniflorous capitula ; but 
the habit, the mostly opposite leaves, theindumentum, and especially 
the corolla and pappus are so different from any thing observable 
in that tribe, that it has appeared to me to be better placed as a 
somewhat anomalous Helianthoid. Its geographical area is that 
of a large proportion of the American anomalous oligotypic 
genera, the Mexican region, to which all its species are limited 
except one, which, apparently as a weed of cultivation, has spread 
over many parts of South America, and has been also carried into 
the tropical regions of the Old World. 
2. Under the name of MILLERIE E are collected a number of small 
or monotypic genera, some of which may not really prove to have 
