llo Mr. Brown's Observations on the 



This, and not (as M. Ricliard has supposed) the ncnrl}'^ related 

 species of North America, is what Linneus originally intended b}-^ 

 his Bidens nivea, as appears by the specimen in his Herbarium : 

 by his original reference to Vaillant's " Ceratocephalus foliis 

 cordatis s. triangularibus flore albo*," described from a speci- 

 men in Surian's Herbarium ; and by his afterwards adding as va- 

 rieties of his species the two plants from Carolina figured in 

 Hortus Elthamensis. 



Caka aspera is abundantly distinct from Bidens, and has very 

 little affinity with any of the original species of Galea, and least 

 of all with C Jfl/««/ce/iSis, from which the character was taken. 

 Since its appearance in Willdenow's work, however, it has been 

 continued in this genus, in most of the recent catalogues of Gar- 

 dens, as those of Desfontaines, Decandolle, and the second edi- 

 tion of Mr. Aiton's Hortus Kewensis; and Lamarck in his Illus- 

 trationes Generum has copied Jacquin's figure of it, apparently 

 as the principal example of the genus Galea. 



It is certainly now too late to recur to the name of Amelias, un- 

 der which Browne, as 1 have already attempted to prove, first pro- 

 posed this plant as a distinct genus; Linneus having soon after 

 given that generic name to two very ditFcrent plants, to one of 

 which it is still applied ; and the real plant of Browne having till 

 now been mistaken, owing in part to his having entirely over- 

 looked the pappus which is deciduous. 



Bide7is nivea, however, as long ago as 1784 was described by 

 Von Ruhr, and published by him in 1792 in the second volume of 

 the Transactions of the Natural History Society of Copenhagen, 

 as a distinct genus, under the name of Melantliera: and in 1803 by 

 Richard, in Michaux's Flora Boreali-Americana, where it is called 

 Melananthera, and where the two species included by Linneus 



• Act. Paris. 1720, p. 327. 



in 



