484 MR. G. BENTHAM ON COMPOSITA. 
tions would have sprung the Eupatoriacese in America, the 
Vernoniacez in the New and the Old World, the Cynaroides in 
the northern and the Mutisiacese in the southern hemisphere. 
From the second modifieation would have arisen, first, the more 
slightly altered Helianthoidesw in both the New and the Old 
World, but chiefly in the former; 2nd, the Helenioidese in 
America, and Anthemides in the Old World, with the thinly 
paleaceous modification or total suppression of the inner bracts 
and calyx-limb ; and, 3rd, the cosmopolitan Asteroidex, Senecio- 
nidez, and the majority of the Inuloides, with an almost universal 
‘suppression of the inner bracts and conversion of the calyx-limb 
into a setose pappus. The third general modification, with a very 
few slight exceptions, has settled down into those Cichoriacee 
whose absolute uniformity has already been observed upon. 
Some further remarks bearing upon the above points may be 
elicited in the investigation of the principle present centres or 
regions of Composite to which I shall now proceed. 
C. Present REGIONS OR CHIEF CENTRES OR AREAS OF THE 
Prrvorpan RACES or Composit. 
The position of the great centres of the order is evidently in 
some measure influenced by its prevalent constitution and the 
consequent effects of climatological and other physical causes upon 
the gradual migrations of its species. Rarely arborescent and 
gregarious, still more rarely aquatic, Composite are in a great 
measure excluded from the vast forest-clad lowlands of the 
Amazon region of America or of east tropical Asia. In the 
swampy bogs of the northern hemisphere they may not be so rare, 
but the species are few. Their favourite haunts are treeless or 
thinly clad mountain-regions, and especially the lower but broken 
grounds, rocky ridges, or open campos of warm extratropical or 
subtropical districts. They may be met with, indeed, at the 
highest altitudes or latitudes which will bear phenogamic vege- 
tation, as well as in the warmest tropical deserts, anda few species 
as ready colonists are perfectly ubiquitous in the traces of man; 
but there are tracts of country, such as the Mediterranean region, 
South Africa, extratropical America, both Mexican and South- 
Andine, especially abounding in highly differentiated races of very 
limited areas, others, again, such as the more temperate or 
mountain districts of the northern hemisphere, where Composite 
genera and species are as numerous and ill-defined in their sub- 
