The Jussieuean^ or Natural^ System of Plants, 14<1 



ter countries of the East, where its roots are frequently used 

 as an article of food. The ditches about Pekin and other 

 Chinese cities, are literally choked up with its abundance. 

 The pericarpia, or beans, are oblong, hard, smooth bodies, and 

 possess the power of vegetating after having been dried for 

 even thirty years. The flowers and roots of the common 

 white iVymphae^a have been long celebrated for their sedative 

 and antiaphrodisiacal qualities, which are, however, now con- 

 sidered doubtful. In Sweden, in years of scarcity, the roots 

 of A^uphar lutea are pounded into cakes, along with the inner 

 bark of Pinus sylvestris. 



This order has been the cause of much difference among 

 botanists, as to its true station in a natural classification, its 

 structure being of so doubtful a character as to leave room for 

 disputing whether it belongs to Dicotyledones or Monocotyle- 

 dones. Upon this subject M. Decandolle has the following 

 remarks : " Gaertner declares that the embryo is undivided, 

 and therefore monocotyledonous. In 1802, 1 remarked in the 

 Bulletin Philomathique, that the embryos both of iVymphae^a 

 and iVuphar are enclosed in a peculiar integument, and that a 

 dicotyledonous structure is apparent when that integument is 

 removed ; shortly after, M. Mirbel declared that the embryo 

 o^ Nelumbium has two thick cotyledons ; in 1806, M. Turpin 

 gave an accurate description of the fruit of iV(?Mw6/ttw luteum, 

 without however removing the doubts about the real structure 

 of the embryo; and two years afterwards his colleague, M. 

 Poiteau, described the seed and germination of the same plant, 

 pointing out that the embryo consisted of two thick cotyledons 

 enclosed within a stipular membrane, but destitute of radicula : 

 this was subsequently confirmed by M. Mirbel after very minute 

 anatomical examination ; that observer compared the seed of 

 Nelumhium to the seed of ^mj^gdalus, and also to that of Piper 

 and Saururus, and also demonstrated that the structure of the 

 stem was analogous to that of exogenous or dicotyledonous 

 plants. A very different opinion was shortly afterwards held 

 by M. Correa de Serra, an observer of the highest order, who 

 admitted indeed that iVymphaeacese are exogenous, but con- 

 tended that the parts which had been taken by previous ob- 

 servers for cotyledons were, in fact, a mere expansion of the 

 radicle, and that cotyledons were as entirely absent in Nelum- 

 bium as in Cuscuta. In the meanwhile M. de Jussieu adhered 

 to the old opinion, that iVymphaeaceae are monocotyledonous ; 

 in which he was supported by the late Professor Louis Claude 

 Richard, a name for ever memorable in the annals of Carpology 

 (karpos, a fruit, logos, a discourse), who published a new view 

 of their structure, in which he differed materially from all his 



