EAST- ASIATIC C0RYLACEJ5. 371 



jjeneric groups, or combining Castanea and Castanojysis with Querciis. 

 this, I think, is easily demonstrable. To me there is no question that 

 the latter is the more correct course ; for the excessive multiplication 

 of genera is an unmixed evil. And, indeed, the characters do not 

 appear of generic value, if properly weighed. AVith all his acumen, 

 his great industry, and wonderful eye for seizing distinctive characters — 

 and the number of previously unnoticed ones he pointed out in this 

 order is surprisingly great, when it is recollected that it h id just been 

 submitted to a careful study by so eminent and practised a botanist as 

 M. Alphonse Be Candolle — it is evident that M. Oersted belonged to 

 the school of naturalists — of which, fortunately for us, there are more 

 in Zoology, especially Ornithology, than in Botany — who look on every 

 well-defined section as a genus. Of this a very good proof is afforded 

 by his review of the genus Vihunium,^ which, unless I err, had by 

 the common consent of botanists never been dismembered since the 

 days of Tournefort, but which he split into five genera. With some 

 slight modifications and corrections, the groups he has distinguished 

 will, I am persuaded, be maintained permanently as divisions of the 

 large and reformed genus Quercus. 



I will conclude these notes by calling attention to the frequ'mcy of 

 the occurrence on some of the Asiatic Lepidolalani of large pseiido- 

 cupul(B. These are indeed so extremely like the cups of some of the 

 Cerri as to have deceived so practised an observer as Mr. Kurz ; for 

 my attention was first directed to them by the receipt from him five 

 years since of a specimen of Q. Griffithii, Hook. f. & Th. (gathered by 

 themselves) with this memorandum written on the label : — " Acorns 

 difi'er toto ccelo from Hooker and Thomson's specimens in Herb. Ind. 

 Or."f One branch was furnished with two of these excrescences, 

 each an inch and a half long, composed of stout, rigid, lanceolate, fulvo- 

 tomentose scales, and having, except for the narrowness of the 

 squamae, considerable resemblance to the cupule of Q. grmca, Ky., as 

 figured by Kotschy.;}: Dr. von Moellendorff's specimen of Q. aliena, 

 BL, and llr. Moule's of Q. Fahri bear similar galls ; and I have now 

 no doubt that the portion of the supposed cupule sent by Dr. Bret- 

 schneider, and which I alluded to in a late communication as in all 

 probability belonging to a new Oak, is merely apiece of one of these 

 excrescences from Q. aliena. A Chinese figure of one of the Oaks used 



♦ Til Belysning af Slaegten Viburnum (Vidensk. Meddel. f. d. Naturh. Fo-. 

 i Kjobenh., 1860, 267 sqq.). But, whilst reducing these to the rank of sections 

 (Gen. Plant., ii., 3.), Dr. Hooker has surely adopted an unphilosophical and 

 retrograde course by admitting Opulm as an additional one ; for it seems certain 

 some of the radiant species, so-called, are mere forms of non-radiate ones, and 

 that the affinity of species differing in this character is very close indeed. The 

 genus in this respect is curiously analogous to Rydrangea, where the nearest 

 ally of the non-radiate H. hirta, S. & Z., is the radiate M. Mcellcnlorjii^ 

 Hance. 



t Dr. Hooker, to whom I happened to mention this, wrote me in April, 

 1871, from on board the Massilia, en route for Marocco — " You have no doubt 

 got some diseased cupules that acquire squarrose cup-scales ; or rather, if I 

 remember right, squarrose diseased leaf-buds resembling acorn-cups, which was 

 commonly the case with the Khasia specimens we gathered." 



t Die Eichen Europa's u. d. Orient's, t. 30. 



2 B 2 



