Dr. Surru's Account of Brunonia. 369 
exterior perianthium in Dipsacee may perhaps most properly be 
deemed inferior, only embracing the seed closel y, being enlarged 
and hardened in the fruit; witness Scabiosa. Now this is pre- 
cisely the case with what I have above described as the inner pe- 
rianthium of Brunonia, the outer one, of four leaves, not being 
analogous to any thing in Scabiosa, except the solitary scales or 
leaves in many species accompanying each flower. Can it be 
possible, therefore, that what I have taken for the inner is really 
the only perianthium in Brunonia, and exactly analogous to the 
outer one in Scabiosa ? "They both alike, in an indurated state, 
envelop and crown the ripe seed. 
If habit were to be much insisted on, nothing can be stronger 
in my favour; for, besides the inflorescence, when I lay the dried 
specimens of the two Brunonie by the side of Scabiosa cretica and 
graminifolia, nothing can be more striking than the exact agree- 
ment of the foliage of B. australis with the former, both in shape 
and colour; while the same circumstances, including the silky 
pubescence, no less agree in B. sericea and S. graminifolia. I am, 
however, aware how treacherous these analogies are in the pro- 
ductions, whether vegetable or animal, of New Holland, but 
their technical characters are no less so. If it would lead us 
widely astray to make the wonderful Ornithorinchus a bird, on 
account of its beak, it would be equally dangerous, were any 
botanist to refer Brunonia to the Campanulacee, for the sake of 
its stigma alone. “ Upon the whole,” as Mr. Brown very can- 
didly remarks, “ instead of our being able to determine the order 
to which this genus belongs, Brunonia seems to afford no small 
proof of the limits of these groups being purely artificial; for 
does it not break down the barrier between Syngenesie and Cam- 
panulacee, Dipsacee and Globularie ?" To this I most heartily 
subscribe ; but if it leads to the overthrow of artificial definitions, 
too 
