404 Dr. Puancuon on Melianthee, 
of organized creation. The subject which I submit to the enlightened judge- 
ment of the Society naturally suggested the foregoing reflections, since it 
offers a striking example of the use which the natural method makes of new 
materials to improve (as I venture to hope) the arrangement of the old. i 
Melianthus, as defined by Linnzeus and all subsequent authors, is one of 
those anomalous vegetable forms which puzzle. the judgement of botanists 
by the very means which render them objects of eager and favourite inquiry. 
While the singular asymmetry of its flowers offers an interesting problem to 
morphological botany, its natural affinities have exercised, with more or less E 
unsatisfactory results, the minds of the three great masters in that field of 
science, Adanson, Jussieu and Linn:eus. By the first it is included in his 
family of Gerania, where are found besides the representatives of six different 
natural groups, namely Malpighia and Banisteria for Malpighiaceew ; Cardio- 
spermum for Sapindacee ; Geranium for Geraniacew ; Oxalis for Ovalidee ; 
Hermannia and Melochia for Biittneriacee ; Viola for Vi tolacece ; and also 
Tropeolum, which is there, I believe not unaptly, placed close to Cardiosper- 
mum. Fearing that a bare quotation of names might throw a shade of ec- 
 centricity upon that original and profound author; I must hasten to say, that 
he first and alone anticipated, with his usual perspicuity, the results which 
new materials enable me to consider as positive: he alone placed Melianthus 
between Cardiospermum and Geranium. The views of Linnzus upon the 
same subject will appear more fanciful and much less correct; since his order 
of Corydales exhibits the unexpected assemblage of Melianthus, Monniera | 
(this last now well-known as a genus of Diosmeo), of Epimedium and Leon- 
tice (Berberidew), Hypecotim and Fumaria (Papaveracec), Impatiens (Bal- . 
3 saminew), Utricularia and Pinguicula (Utriculariee), and Calceolaria (Scro- 
phularine), the last marked with a well-deserved and very significant (?). 
Lest I should appear to quote these opinions as matter of criticism, I must 
refer my readers to the delightful work* from which they are extracted; and 
there, under the title of that very same order, they will find that a mixture of 
erroneous data and of deceitful but ingenious analogies prevailed in this case, 
in the acute mind of the author of the * Philosophia Botanica. On the other 
hand, A. Laur. de Jussieu, whose wonderful aptitude for detecting natural 
* Prelect. in Ord. Nat. Pl. (ed. Gisecke), p. 371, et seq. 
