171- Mr. J. Miers on the Calyceracea?. 



XXVI. — On the Calyceracese. 

 By John Miers, F.R.S., F.L.S. &c. 



The small order of the Calyceracece is little known : it is, how- 

 ever, of great interest to the systematic botanist, because it con- 

 stitutes the connecting link between the extensive family of the 

 Composite and the contiguous orders of the Dipsacece and 

 Valerianacece. It exhibits also many points of structure which 

 are exceedingly curious. 



It was first instituted as a distinct family by Mr. Robert 

 Brown, under the title of the Calycerea, in a memoir read before 

 the Linnsean Society in Feb. 1816, when, with his extraordinary 

 acumen, that most distinguished of botanists was able to deter- 

 mine, from very incomplete specimens, its principal and most 

 essential characters. Nearly about the same time, Cassini, while 

 engaged in numerous investigations in the family of the Compo- 

 site, noticed, in the genera Calycera and Boopis, a considerable 

 difference of structure; he therefore separated them into a 

 small order, for which he proposed the name of Boopida. This 

 memoir was read before the French Academy in August of the 

 same year. 



From the admirable remarks of Mr. Brown on this subject *, 

 and the subsequent very complete analysis by M. Richard, in 

 1820t, of the whole family, which then consisted of only five 

 species, representing three genera, we possess nearly all the 

 information hitherto published respecting the structure of the 

 order. A few years later (in 1831) Lessing described two new 

 species from Sellow's Brazilian collections, and also two others 

 brought from Chile by Poppig : the characters of these last were 

 afterwards given in fuller detail by Poppig himself in 1835 J. 



These descriptions added nothing to our previous knowledge 

 of the structure of the order. DeCandolle, in the following 

 year (1836), gave, in his 'Prodromus/ a monograph of the 

 whole family, and in a very succinct manner gave the characters 

 of the ten species (all then known), which he arranged under 

 four genera. Some years ago, I proposed the genus Nastanthus, 

 the type of which I found in the Cordillera of Chile in 1825, 

 and of which I then made a drawing with structural details ; 

 since then I have added ten other species to this genus. I also 

 indicated the existence of another new genus, Anomocarpus, 

 which I had long before founded upon a plant of Cuming's 

 collection in Chile, to which I now add six other species. The 

 genus Leucocera of Turczaninow§ is inadmissible, as it rests 



* Linn. Trans, xii. p. 135. t Mem. Mus. vi. p. 75. 



% Nov. Gen. et Spec. i. p. 21, tab. 33 & 34. 

 § Bot. Zeitung, xxxi. p. 712. 



