natural Family of Plants called Composite. 139 
sary to give their disposition in the tube or undivided part of the 
limb; there being instances in both families where the lateral nerves 
of the segments do not unite at top; and, as has been formerly 
. remarked, several examples in other families of a nearly similar 
disposition in the segments, accompanied by a different dispo- 
sition in the tube. To the examples of this kind formerly given, 
Globularia cordifolia may be added, in the segments of whose 
lower lip there are three simple nerves, of which the lateral do 
not unite at top, and continue distinct nearly to the base of the 
tube, where they converge and appear to unite with the middle 
nerve. ; | | Eo 
In Acicarpha and Boopis the filaments appear to me jointed as 
in Composite ; a character I have not been able to observe in 
the very few flowers which I have examined of Calycera. 
In Acicarpha the florets of the circumference are hermaphro- 
dite and apparently complete, the antheræ containing pollen and 
the ovaria producing seed ; while those of the disk are male with 
an incomplete pistillum. Such an arrangement has not hitherto 
been observed in Composite, in which, wherever the central flo- 
rets are male with an imperfect pistillum, those of the circumfe- 
rence are female with or without the rudiments of stamina. 
The regularity in the order of expansion of flowers from the 
base to the top of the capitulum in Acicarpha tribuloides and spa- 
thulata, and the irregularity, approaching to the inverted order, 
which I have found to exist in both species of Boopis, seem to 
prove the capitulum to be simple in the former genus and com- 
pound in the latter, notwithstanding the great resemblance be- 
tween theirinvolucra. ‘The exact nature of its composition, how- 
ever, in Boopis can only be satisfactorily determined in recent 
specimens. ` 
T 2 This 
