CLASS MONCECIA. IS* 



native species of Vitis, or Grape-vines, some of the 

 plants producing staminiferous flowers only, with the 

 rudiments of a pistillum which is never perfected ; 

 other plants produce hoth stamens and fruitful germs, 

 though these stamens are probably imperfect. The 

 proper situation then of this genus would have been 

 in the next classs Dkecia, but this circumstance, 

 probably unknown to Linnaeus at first, induced him, 

 naturally enough, to retain them, notwithstanding, in 

 the same genus with the Vine of Europe, whose flow- 

 ers are always perfect (or each of them provided with 

 all the organs necessary to the perfection of the fruit). 

 Many other genera, also, include species which are 

 Monoecious or Dioecious, but are still retained in the 

 same class of perfect flowers to which the majority are 

 referrible. In our present class, the two kinds of flow- 

 ers constituting the same species are situated on differ- 

 ent parts of the same plant; and to this allusion is made 

 in the term Monozcia, which signifies one habitation. 

 Whether this circumstance of the comparative fertility 

 of flowers alone ought to be of any primary import- 

 ance in a system of classification may well be ques- 

 tioned. There are, however, in this and the following 

 classes, a considerable number of plants which differ 

 not merely in this respect, but likewise in the nature 

 and form of the perianth ; as, for example, in the nut 

 tribe (Corylaceje), where the staminiferous or male 

 flowers, in catkins or aments, bear little or no resem- 

 blance to the pistilliferous or female flowers, which pro- 

 duce the nuts or fruit. To such plants this distinction of 

 classification would be well applied ; and all the rest, 

 with flowers similar in themselves, though perfect or im- 

 perfect, might be referred, properly enough, to any of 

 the other classes by the number and disposition of their 

 stamens. That such plants as those of the Coryla- 

 ceje ought to be retained in a particular class, like 



