244 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



ment with Ericacece, must be conceded, as also the similarity of habit. 

 But the complete absence of an hypogynous disk, and the insertion of 

 the stamens upon (instead of with) the corolla, are characters which 

 ought to weigh heavily, in the absence of all the peculiar marks of 

 Ericacece, — such, for instance, as the indusiate stigma, tetrahedral pol- 

 len, &c. Dr. Hooker, after due mention and consideration of these 

 points (in Kew Jour. Bot. 9, p. 372), yet finds, in his remarkable 

 genus Diplarche, strong evidence of a transition between Diapensia 

 and Loiseleuria, his genus having one set of stamens adnate high up on 

 a corolla which much resembles in shape that of Diapensia Lapponica. 

 But Diplarche exhibits the disk, the stigma, and the pollen characteris- 

 tic of Ericacece, and has neither the filament nor the anther of Dia- 

 pensia and Pyxidanthera. 



There is a genus, however, which accords with these in the whole gen- 

 eral structure of the flower, and even in that of the filament and anther. 

 This is Shortia, Torr. & Gray, published, upon most imperfect charac- 

 ters, at the close of an article of mine in the American Journal of Science 

 and Arts, vol. 42, in the year 1841, two years earlier, apparently, than 

 the fully characterized Schizocodon of .Siebold and Zuccarini. The his- 

 tory of this genus, and of the identification of the almost .unknown 

 Alleghanian plant with that of Japan, is given in the following note,* 



* "At the end of the separate herbarium of Michaux, in the museum of the 

 Jardin des Plantes, Paris, is preserved a specimen, ticketed, 'Hautes montagnes de 

 Carolinie, an Pyrola spec. ? an genus novum 1 ' The scapes bear the dehiscent 

 capsule, tipped with a style, and surrounded by the sepals ; the corolla and stamens 

 are absent. A sketch of the specimen, a leaf, and the summit of one of the scapes 

 were obligingly presented to me by Professor Decaisne. With more zeal than 

 judgment, I drew up the characters from this unique and incomplete specimen, and 

 in this Journal for January, 1841, in a note to an account of a botanical excursion 

 to the mountains of North Carolina, I published the plant under the name of 

 Shortia galacifolia, Torr. & Gray. Contrary to my hopes and expectations, the 

 plant has not yet turned up in its native haunts. The late Dr. Short, who has 

 since gone to his rest, deserved better commemoration at our hands than this emp- 

 ty name of a most obscure plant. Indeed, our botanists, applying the old law 

 maxim, De non apparentibus et de non existenlibus eadem est ratio, are not unreason- 

 ably doubting if there ever was any such plant. Some lucky botanist will proba- 

 bly rediscover it in the region around the Black Mountains. What I have now to 

 announce is, that the genus is found, and probably the very species, in a widely 

 distant region indeed, but just where, after all we have been learning, it was not 

 unnatural to expect it. 



" In the vear 1843, if I mistake not (I cannot at this moment ascertain the exact 



