natural Family of Plants called Composita. 99 
upper part of the spike; and this relation also exists in tlic more 
compound inflorescence of Ricinus, Syphonia, and Celtis, i in whieh 
the order of expansion is equally inverted. Wt 
- It may seem rather paradoxical.to select Euphorbia as an ex- 
ample of the same relation; this genus being considered by Lin- 
neus, and the greater part of the botanists who have adopted his 
system, as having a dodecandrous hermaphrodite flower. We 
have already, however, I believe, sufficient evidence that this su p- 
posed hermaphrodite flower is in reality formed of several mo- 
nandrous male flowers surrounding a single female *. 1 
In conformity with this view of its composition, and with the 
relation above attempted to be established, the development: 
the pistillum €— that of the stamina in many — leon 
— ; 
Tt is more difficult to determine whether this order of expansion 
and relative position of sexes in Euphorbia be in conformity with 
the general rule, or an exception toit. For its faciculus of flowers 
may be considered as analogous either to the simple spike, and 
consequently having an inverted order of expansion, as in Allium 
descendens, and certain species of Grevillea and Anadenia : or it 
may be assimilated to the compound spike, as in several species 
of the genus the male flowers appear to be separated into fasciculi; 
* * To the Éen I have adduced (in my Remarks on the Botany of New Holland) 
in support of this opinion, I- am now ‘enabled to add the more direct pro: 
certain species of Euphorlia itself, in which the female flower is furnished with a manifest 
calyx. I have formerly observed, that in a few cases the footstalk of the ovarium is dilated 
and obscurely. lobed at top: but in the species now referred to it terminates in three di- 
stinet and equal lobes of considerable length, and which being regularly opposite to the cells 
of the capsule may be cór mpared to the three outer foliola of the perianthium of Phyllanthus, 
Between which’ and.the’cells of the capsule the same relation exists. This calyx is most 
remarkable in an undescribed species of Euphorbia from the coast of Patagonia, in the 
Herbarium of Sir Joseph Banks; but it is observable, though less distinet, i in E. punicea 
and several other species, ` ` 
o2 and 
