50 Mr. W. S. Macleay on certain general Laws regulating 



The next work in which the distinction appeared was the 

 Mimoires du MmSum d'Histoire Naturelle ; in a part of which, 

 published in the autumn of 1821, a paper was inserted by 

 M. Decandolle on the natural family of Crucifera. Here this 

 botanist states, that he finds it possible to express in a table all 

 the affinities existing in this family of plants by what he terms a 

 double entree ; in other words, he supposes that there are trans- 

 versal affinities as well as direct ones, — a notion of the reality 

 however which appears to be much more confused than that 

 previously entertained by M. Agardh and explained as above in 

 his Botanical Aphorisms. 



In the same year (1821) likewise appeared the abovemen- 

 tioned work of M. Fries on Fungi, which is explicit on the sub- 

 ject, and wherein the very same expressions of affinity and ana- 

 logy are used to designate these different relations, which I had 

 applied to them two years before in treating of Lamellicorn 

 Insects*. The 



cipationes formae perfections in plantis inferioribus non raro obveniant; ut etiam in 

 plantis superioribus regressus ad formain imperfecborem." Now in the Horcz Etito- 

 mologica, p. 223, 1 have attempted to show that Nature, in the imperfectiy constructed 

 jicrita, sketches out in a manner the five principal forms of the animal kingdom. So 

 also the direct return of Annulose Fermes to Jcrita is repeatedly asserted in the same 

 work : this however seems to depend more properly on M. Agardh's other observation, 

 viz. " Duplex est itaque affinitas plantarura, autea, quas oritur e transitu ab nnk formi 

 normali ad alteram, aut ea, quae versatur imprimis in anticipatione formas superioris aut 

 regressu in formam inferiorem. lUam afEnitatem trarisitus appellamus, banc transulta- 

 tioriis." This afEnity of traiisultation is evidently nothing else than the disposition ob- 

 servable in opposite points of the same series or transitus of affinity to meet each other, 

 and of which I have given various examples in the Hora Entomologica, p. 319. 



* I owe my acquaintance with these several works, as well as much information on 

 points of which I should otherwise have been totally ignorant, to the friendship of the 

 consummate botanist, in whose possession the Banksian Library has been so worthily 

 deposited. The second part of the Hora Entomologka was published in April 1821. 

 On the 24th of the following month I first saw a copy of M. Decandolle's paper, 

 •which was not published till some weeks after ; and in the course of last winter [ 



first 



