404 Dr. Planchon on Meliantheae, 



of organized creation. The subject which I submit to the enlightened judge- 

 ment of the Society naturally suggested the foregoing reflections, since it 

 offers a striking example of the use which the natural method makes of new 

 materials to improve (as I venture to hope) the arrangement of the old. 



Melianthus, as defined by Linnaeus and all subsequent authors, is one of 

 those anomalous vegetable forms which puzzle the judgement of botanists 

 by the very means which render them objects of eager and favourite inquiry. 

 While the singular asymmetry of its flowers offers an interesting problem to 

 morphological botany, its natural affinities have exercised, with more or less 

 unsatisfactory results, the minds of the three great masters in that field of 

 science, Adanson, Jussieu and Linnoeus. By the first it is included in his 

 family of Gerania, where are found besides the representatives of six different 

 natural groups, namely Malpighia and Banisteria for Malpighiacece ; Cardio- 

 spermum for Sapindacece ; Geranium for Geraniacece ; Oxalis for Oxalidece ; 

 Hermannia and Melochia for Buttneriacece ; Viola for Violacew ; and also 

 Tropceolum, which is there, I believe not unaptly, placed close to Cardiosper- 

 mum. Fearing that a bare quotation of names might throw a shade of ec- 

 centricity upon that original and profound author, I must hasten to say, that 

 he first and alone anticipated, with his usual perspicuity, the results which 

 new materials enable me to consider as positive : he alone placed Melianthus 

 between Cardiospermum and Geranium. The views of Linnaeus upon the 

 same subject will appear more fanciful and much less correct ; since his order 

 of Corydales exhibits the unexpected assemblage of Melianthus, Monnia-a 

 (this last now well-known as a genus of Diosmece), of Epimedium and Leon- 

 tice (Berberidece), Hypecoiim and Fumaria (Papavernceoe), Impatiens {Bal- 

 saminece), Utricularia and Pinguicula (Vtriculariece), and Calceolaria (Scro- 

 phularince), the last marked with a well -deserved and very significant (?). 

 Lest I should appear to quote these opinions as matter of criticism, I must 

 refer my readers to the delightful work* from which they are extracted; and 

 there, under the title of that very same order, they will find that a mixture of 

 erroneous data and of deceitful but ingenious analogies prevailed in this case, 

 in the acute mind of the author of the ' Philosophia Botanica.' On the other 

 hand, A. Laur. de Jussieu, whose wonderful aptitude for detecting natural 



* Praelect. in Ord. Nat. PI. (ed. Gisecke), p. 371, et seq. 



