298 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
modern habit of multiplying small orders consisting of a very 
few species. The ZEgiceree have here but five species, and 
the Theophrastee no more than twenty-nine, both are nearer 
to Myrsineaceæ than to any of the succeeding ones, and with 
them might, easily have been distinguished from others by a 
common character, their present ordinal characters being in 
that case considered as those of suborders. This course 
would, systematically, have been quite as correct, and much 
more practically convenient. Indeed, were it not perhaps 
that we are not in the habit of associating our humble Prim- 
roses with anything arborescent, it might have been a more na- 
tural plan to have included them also in a distinct suborder 
ofthe same group, which would then have been marked by 
a character perfectly distinct and easily ascertained, and the 
Lentibulariee would then have borne the same relation to them 
that Scrophularinee do to Solanacee ; nor would the asso- 
ciation of Primulacee and Myrsinacee have been at all more 
unnatural than that of Viola and Alsodeia, or of any herba- 
ceous with arborescent genera, which occur in most large. 
orders. 
Next come three very distinct orders with a pluricarpellary 
(very seldom bicarpellary) ovary divided into cells, and an 
axile placentation : Sapotacea, approaching Myrsineaceæ, by 
the presence of the inner series of stamens, opposed to the 
lobes of the corolla, with or without the addition of others; 
Ebenacee with dicecious flowers and stamens some multiple 
of the lobes of the corolla and often scarcely epipetalous, 
showing an approach to the polypetalous orders; and Styra- 
caceæ, with hermaphrodite flowers, stamens more numerous 
than the lobes of the corolla (except in one species) and the 
ovary usually more or less adherent, also allied almost 2$ — — 
much to some Polypetale asto the Corolliflore. These three —— 
orders, which had long been in a state of great confusion, i 
have been worked up by Alph. de Candolle with all the care 
his materials allowed him, and are reduced to a defnite 
intelligible form. : 
Sapotacee contain twenty genera (besides the doubtful 
