64 CLASS PENTANDRIA. 



in the world, growing in great quantities together, and 

 its narrow, thin, and immersed leaves affording food 

 for flocks of sea-birds. In this plant there is neither 

 calyx nor corolla, but each set of anthers and styles is 

 succeeded by four pedieellated seeds. 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE CLASS PENTANDRIA. 



More than one fourth of the vegetable kingdom 

 produce flowers with five stamens, either free, or 

 combined together, as in Syngenesia. But the pres- 

 ent class professes to include, alone, such plants as 

 have 5 separate stamens; and this symmetry of the 

 number 5, which obtains even in the lowest order of 

 the animal kingdom, among the zoophytes, such as 

 the star-fish, and sea-egg, prevails equally through 

 every other subordinate part of the flower, except the 

 style, and some of the fruits. The calyx and corolla 

 will be found almost universally quinquifid, and the 

 fruit, not unfrequently, 5-celled, 5-valved, or 5-part- 

 ed, though by a kind of constant and hereditary 

 abortion, or abridgment, this number in the parts of 

 the fruit is often reduced to an apparent unit. In the 

 case of all fruits, however it may be with the other 

 parts of the flower, there are strong reasons, as will 

 appear more apparent in the sequel of our examina- 

 tions, to believe, that when consisting of more than 

 one cell or one valve, their number is only augmented 

 by portions, more or less distinct, of several ingrafted 

 or coalescing single-celled, and single-valved pericarps. 

 Spontaneous and hereditary ingraftment by approach, 

 and obliteration and abortion of parts for want of equal 

 room and nourishment, are the obvious causes of most 



