464 TRANS. OF THE ACAD. OP SCIENCE. 



and Decaisne of Paris I have now had the opportunity of 

 examining and comparing fragments of Lamarck's original 

 J. pallescens and Michaux's J. acuminatus. The former's 

 name refers, as Prof. Roeper informs me, to two poor {more 

 suo) specimens collected by Commerson near Buenos-Ayres; 

 the heads are apparently 5-flowered ; the flowers, not yet 

 open, are similar to those of our plant, but are 6-androus and 

 pedicelled. Lamarck gives North as well as South America 

 as the habitat of his plant, but adds that his specimens are 

 those above noticed ; his reference to North America is evi- 

 dently based on quotations from Pink. Aim. t. 92, f. 9, and 

 Moris. Hist. 3, sect. 8, t. 9. f. 5, which both represent rather 

 something like J. tenuis. Meyer was undoubtedly misled by 

 these references to North American localities to substitute 

 Lamarck's to Michaux's name. La Harpe, p. 136, suggests, 

 probably with more justice, that Commerson's plant is an im- 

 mature J. Dombeyanus. Michaux's specimen, collected in 

 South Carolina, is a rather small-flowered form of var. legiti- 

 mus, such as often occur south-eastward (comp. Hb. norm. 

 58), with only 5 flowers in a head (Michaux says 3 flowers), 

 the (unripe) capsule being about as long as the sepals. The 

 other synonyms of the older authors have not given any 

 less trouble, principally because both Meyer and Kunth have 

 described their J. paradoxus and J. fraternus with outer 

 sepals exceeding the inner ones (a very rare case in any form 

 of J. acuminatus) ; and in the former the capsule was said 

 to be longer, in the latter shorter, than the sepals; neither 

 mentions the seeds. Having been able to examine a frag- 

 ment of Kunth's plant, which had been sent from Boston by 

 Boott, and is preserved in the Royal Herbarium at Berlin, I 

 can most positively assert that it is a scanty-flowered form of 

 what I have called var. legitimus, with the outer sepals very 

 slightly exceeding the inner ones, and with a not fully ripe 

 capsule about the length of the inner sepals. Meyer's J. 

 paradoxus is more difficult to identify, because the original 

 specimen does not exist in his herbarium ; he had examined 

 it, as a memorandum indicates, in Hb. Lehmann, to whom it 

 was given by Willdenow under the name of J. p)olycephalus, 

 and preserved only a drawing of it and a rough sketch of 

 some details. There are, however, in the sheet superscribed 

 by Meyer "/. paradoxus? ten dried specimens from different 

 parts of the United States and Mexico, perhaps rather uncrit- 

 ically thrown together; flowers of only one of them have been 

 sent to me, and they belong to the ordinary form of var. le- 

 gitimus. The figure of the original type represents a plant 

 with a decompound panicle about 4 inches high and as wide, 

 with numerous few-flowered heads, and leafy excrescences 

 from some of them; the other sketch shows an acute capsule 

 exceeding the lanceolate-subulate sepals of equal length, and 



