COMPARATIVE ANTIQUITY. 483 
any other tribe, neither the pistil nor the andreecium, nor even 
the corolla affording the slightest structural or sexual distinctive 
character throughout the eight hundred odd species; the pappus, 
though more variable, is always amongst those which show the 
least resemblance to a calyx-limb; and the receptacular palex, in 
the few cases where present, are the least like ordinary bracts. 
We may thus, perhaps, be led to conjecture that the primitive 
form of Composite had regular gamopetalous flowers with an 
inferior ovary, the calyx, corolla, and uniseriate stamens isomerous 
and probably 5-merous, and the pistil 2-carpellary as in several 
Rubiacez and allied orders, but the ovary internally already 
reduced to a single cell with a single erect ovule, and the seed 
exalbuminous, enclosed in an indehiscent pericarp, and containing 
a straight embryo with an inferior radule—and that it is in the 
gradual course of subsequent consolidations that the bracts have 
crowded round the condensed flowers and usurped the functions 
of the calyx-limb, which has become obliterated or transformed so 
as to be better adapted to its new duties; the corollas have become 
contracted, or the outer ones variously developed in forms and 
colours adapted to assist in the process of cross fertilization 
(vexillary functions of Delpino); the anthers, brought into close 
contact by the compression of the flowers, have become united 
and their styles gradually modified so as to assist them in dis- 
charging their pollen; and the conversion from hermaphroditism 
to unisexuality may in various races have variously preceded or 
followed some or all of these changes, and produced those nume- 
rous variations observed in the order. 
We might further be led to imagine that several of these changes 
had taken place at avery early period, previously to the disruption 
or stoppage of communication between what are now the tropical 
regions of the globe, that, besides the parent form above supposed, 
Composite existed showing several important modifications, such 
as, Ist, the regular and uniform tubular development of the corolla, 
accompanied by more or less of suppression of the inner bracts 
and of the normal calyx-limb and substitution of a pappus; 2nd, 
the reduction of the corolla-limb, attended frequently by a sexual 
dimorphism, and occasional oblique development of the outer 
female corollas; and, 3rd, perhaps at a later period, the uniform 
unilateral development of the whole of the corollas, accompanied 
usually by a suppression of the inner bracts and conversion of 
the ealyx-limb into the pappus. From the first.of these modifica- 
