346 <A Boranicat DEscRIPTION OF THE: 
[ think, it was the genius of Linnzus which firft fug=. 
gefted the idea that, with refpect to vegetables, the bufinefs. 
of creation is not fationary : or,in other words, that new 
plants are conftantly creating from theadmixture, or union, 
of two diftind fpecies, either of the fame, or of a different. 
genus. 
This idea of your illuftrious countryman has. received’ 
very powerful confirmation from the difcoveries which. 
have been made, of late years, in various parts of the globe.. 
In America, I have obferved a confiderable number of 
thefe new, or hybrid, vegetables. Our woods, our fields, 
and our meadows, are full of them, It is among the 
plante fyngenefie, more efpecially, that I have ebferved 
thefe hybrid plants, the offspring of promifcuous cohabi- 
tation. The genera “oldago and Afer are, with us, two. 
families of baftards. Several of the fpecies of thefe genera, 
defcribed by Mr. Aiton, in his excellent Hortus Kewen/is,, 
evidently belong to this clafs. 
I have fometimes. imagined, that the plant which is the. 
more immediate fubject of this letter is alfoan hybrid. It. 
is, certainly, a beautiful example of a conne@ing medium 
between Podophyllum and Sanguinaria. Its calix is fome- 
times three-leaved, which is the uniform number of the. 
leaves of the calix of the Podophyllum. ‘Thefe leaves, in 
both plants, are coloured, and concave. The root of both 
has the famefmell, and tafte. To the Sanguinaria, our 
plant is related in the following characters. The calix, in , 
both, is fhorter than the corolla, and falls off before the 
expanfion of the flower: the petals are eight in number: 
the filaments are fhorter than the corolla: the ftigma is per- 
fiftent. But the relation of the Fefer/onia to the two ge-. 
nera, juft mentioned, is, perhaps, ftill greater than it ap=. 
pears to be, from the mere circumftances which I have. 
taken notice of, The facies plantarum, as Linnzus has. 
very 
