NEILGHERRY PLANTS. 51 
Having thus shown how nearly Rosee and Potentillee associate and how brambles and 
raspberries pass into cherries and plums it now only remains for me to endeavour to trace the 
connection between these and Pomee or apples, pears, hawthorns, &c. In this tribe the 
calyx corolla and stamens are the same as in the others, except that the calyx is tubular at 
the base and more or less perfectly encloses the carpels or ovaries. ‘These vary from two to 
five having two erect, not pendulous (as in the other) ovules in each, and as the fruit advances 
to maturity the calyx and outer coat of the carpel increases in size and thickness until in 
course of time it becomes an apple inclosing the carpels which in most of them, are not hard 
and bony as in the drupe. Here are striking points of difference: but to set against them 
we have the inferior fruit of the rose: we have the enlarging receptacle of the strawberry, 
the thickening of the outer coat of the seed vessel of the plum, peach, &c., and we have the 
bony seed of the hawthorn, one of the pomez, and the want of itin Pygeum one of the 
amygdalew. The difference therefore is reduced to the erect ovules and theseed vessels 
being enclosed in the enlarged and prolonged calyx, to which in this family only a subordi- 
nate value is assigned; and this also is therefore reduced to the rank of a suborder thought 
at first sight so very unlike all the others. 
~ It must be acknowledged that it is no easy matter to construct a general character ca- 
culated to include the whole but still it has been accomplished. Endlicher however, the last 
writer on the subject, has preferred raising Amygdalee and Pomacez to the rank of distinct 
orders in which I am disposed to go along with him at least as regards the latter as tending 
to render our characters less prolix while they more clearly define the limits of our orders. 
I particularly mention Pome, because I think sufficient importance has not in this case been 
attached to the difference of position of the ovule which, added to the difference of habit 
properties and relative position of the carpel and calyx, form a combination of characters, in 
my opinion, quite sufficient for the purpose ; the essential difference depending on the direc- 
tion of the ovule. Ovules pendulous seed inverted would then form the essential distinction 
of Rosacee—While ovules erect seed ascending would, combined with the other characters 
of Rosacez, characterize Pomee. 
I have dilated on the interesting peculiarities of these two remarkable families as afford- 
ing such numerous and striking, but upon the whole, easily explained, examples of fruits 
most dissimilar in appearance but which, when properly analysed and traced back to their 
origin, can easily be shown to be in their elementary structure nearly the same and owing 
their differences at maturity to adventitious circumstances often the creatures of art not of 
nature. Who from looking at a luscious peach or plum, and a scraggy bean er pea pod, could 
ever suspect that in their earlier stages they were all structurally alike, or who untaught, 
could imagine the parts of a raspberry and a cherry so exactly alike that the former is, as it 
were, buta heap of miniature cherries sticking together. Such analytical investigations of 
structure through all its stages, ub ovo usyne ad mala, coustitates the Philosophy of Botan ys and 
forms the foundation on which the beautiful super-structure of the Natural classification of 
plants, is built, 
