2 ILLUSTRATIONS OF 



t 



uncertainty on this point need not be entertained, and I propose 

 therefore, to offer my reasons, founded on the facts now demon- 

 strated, for justifying the conclusions thus formed. In Sir Wm. 

 Hooker's most valuable herbarium there exists among Goudot's 

 collection from Columbia, a plant which appeared to me to be a 

 Saracha, except that its habit is rather more suffruticose and 

 erect than most species of that genus, and- its flowers smaller and 

 fewer than usual : on examining this more attentively and com- 

 panng it carefully with the figure and description of L'Heritier's 

 plant, I could not do otherwise than conclude that it was very 

 closely_ related to his Witheringia solanacea, and as such may well 

 serve, in the absence of the original, as a substitute for the type 

 of what he intended as that genus. I have also compared this 

 Columbian plant with the descriptions given by Prof. Kunth of 

 several fruticosc species, which he arranged in the same genus, 

 and at the same time have examined several analogous plants 

 fi-om intertropical America, either closely allied or nearly iden- 



Witheringia 



J 



W. pida. Mart 



at the same time with Von Martius^s excellent description and 

 figure of this latter species before quoted : all these forms ex- 



gradat 



the other. But Witheringia, according to modern authors, is 

 made to embrace a number of heterogeneous species, and it is 

 obvious that, without taking into account L^Heritier's plant, all 

 the remammg species in the herbaceous section enumerated bv 

 Dr. Walpers (Repert. iv. 29) do not belong to that genus, being 



very 



a good subgenus. 



Throuirhout tlip vpo-Pt-^ 



. - o * — -t5"^"^ "^ Aiii"^ luuiviuuais DOS- 



sessmg aberrant characters, and exhibiting an intermediate state 

 between the artificial limits of our botanical distributions, or par- 

 aking of their mutual extremes, and this is as fully apparent in 

 the Solanace<E as m any other family. Thus, many exnerienced 

 botanists have found it difficult to determine Vheth'er cE in' 

 dmduas should be referred to Petunia o. Salpiglossis, plants not 

 on y belonging to separate genera, but hitherto placed in distinc 

 natural orders. In bke manner it may be doubted whether cer 

 tarn plants shodd be referred to PhUis, when they are see^ 

 to be scanty of the very remarkable character that distinguishes 



rti' ' o/ LTr' • "?• v' ^'T^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^-d extreme in! 

 flatiou of the calyx in fruit ; and so also in the approximate ge^ 



nus Sara^a, individuals are sometimes observed,^ wWe com- 

 bined with a calyx not sensibly increasing in size t^y present 

 a corolla deeply campanulate, mVked with'large cdou/ed' spots 



