natural Family of Plants called Composite. 101 
at variance with the foregoing observations, that although in an 
assemblage of flowers priority of expansion generally indicates a 
greater degree of perfection, and consequently a more ready con- 
vertibility of the hermaphrodite into the female flower; yet in a 
hermaphrodite flower the development of stamina usually pre- 
cedes that of pistilla. The most remarkable exceptions to this 
order of development which I at present remember, occur im 
several species of Plantago, where the stigmata are fully deve- 
loped, and often even withered, before the bursting of the antheræ. 
I now proce to ind some remarks on certain genera of 
Compositæ which either occur under different names in late syste- 
matic works, or whose structure and limits seem to be imper- 
fectly understood. 
: SOLIVA 
was established in the Prodromus Floræ Peruvianæ et Chilensis, 
and is adopted by Persoon in his Synopsis Plantarum. 
To this genus Hippia minuta of the Linnean Herbarium un- 
questionably belongs, and it is perhaps not specifically distinct 
from Soliva pedicellata. But on comparing the structure of this 
plant with the figures and descriptions, given by Mons. de Jus- 
sieu (in the fourth volume of the Annales du Museum,) of the dif- 
ferent species of his Gymnostyles, it appears to me evident that the 
whole of this genus is referable to Soliva, whose principal charac- 
ters would consist in the want of corolla or perhaps its accretion: 
with the persistent style in the female florets; in the pericarpia 
being more or less winged, and presenting their disk me of 
their margins to the centre of the capitulum. | 
Sir 
