wight's botanical letters. 173 



ciiigs of about thirty coloured drawings of OrchidecB, made 

 by Mrs W., which, judging from two I have ah-eady re- 

 ceived are very correct. He lias also sent me a sketch 

 of what appears to me to be a new genus of Acanthacete, 

 but on this I cannot decide until I have seen specimens : 

 It forms a goodly shrub, twenty feet in height, and 

 ranges among the Ruellieee. I lately looked over my Com- 

 positce, and find among them several not noticed in De 

 Candolle's paper in the " Contributions" : aniong these are 

 Athanasia Indica Roxb., found in corn fields at Bellary ; a 

 species o( Diplopappus? not unlike Aster Chinensis, but the 

 leaves are sessile, stem clasping and entire, and neither in- 

 cised nor serrated : flowers rather large, pale yellow. I have 

 been sadly puzzled between Glossocardia and Glossogyne, 

 owing I suspect to Cassini and Lessing having drawn their 

 characters from different species, and Roxburgh's characters 

 are here too short to be of much use. I am very anxious to 

 see Nees publish on the Graminets, for I wish to put mine in 

 order, and would like when about it, to do it well, and make 

 myself master of the subject, which I find no easy matter from 

 Kunth's Enumeratio. Nees has perhaps multiplied genera 

 to excess, but Kunth has certainly fallen into the opposite 

 erroi', and left the whole of the large genera in confusion. 

 But to return, — I have some other CoinpositcB, not included 

 in the " contributions," but which I do not recollect well 

 enough to designate at present. I have added to the Penin- 

 sular Flora the Leptadenia imherhis? from the ceded dis- 

 tricts : a twining plant, not unlike the L. reticidata, but not 

 so pale and pulverulent, and it appears altogether a smaller 

 shrub. The bark is not corky. The Tylophora which I 

 found at Bellary is the T.fasciculata: I again found it at 

 Courtallum. 



Lest I should afterwards forget, I may here mention that 

 our Sphcsrocarya, and I dare say Wallich's (of which there is 

 a figure in the Tent. Fl. Nepaul.)^ is certainly Gaertner's Hyo- 

 phorhe; and Hooker's Pyrenacantha appears to be a smooth 

 ^""uited species of Gsertner's Granadilla Hondola. I send 



