516 



dioecious, except one or two species of Ruscus." (Cen- 

 tella ranged among these in Gen. PL is now referred to 

 Hydrocotyle.) 



11 Draccena, Asparagus, Convallaria, Uvularia, Glori- 

 osa and Erythronium, compose another section. The last 

 is intermediate, as it were, between the present order and 

 the Coronaria. Gloriosa simplex is a small plant, not 

 unlike Erythronium, with reflexed petals." (What Miller, 

 who is Linnaeus's sole authority for this species, intended, 

 nobody has ever been able to make out.) 



" Medeola, Paris and Trillium have whorled leaves, 

 except M. asparagoides, which scarcely differs from the 

 genus Asparagus, except in having three styles instead of 

 one." 



Aristolochia, Asarum and Cytinus, nearly akin to each 

 other, are removed from this order by the author in his 

 manuscript, to the 27th, Rhoeadea, but not without a 

 query. In the same place we meet with what may per- 

 haps prove a solution of the mystery, which Giseke was 

 so anxious to unriddle, and to which we have already al- 

 luded in the beginning of this part of our subject. Lin- 

 naeus has here mentioned Nymphcca, as having in some of 

 its species one cotyledon, in others two. He notes also 

 that Menispermum and Aristolochia are dicotyledonous. 

 Nymphtea however appears to be the great secret which 

 the worthy professor told his pupil that he or some other 

 person might chance to find out in ten, twenty or fifty 

 years, and would then perceive that Linnaeus himself had 

 been aware of it. Accordingly, Gaertner and Jussieu have 

 made the same discovery, or rather, fallen into the same 

 mistake; describing Nymphaa as monocotyledonous, and 

 Cyamus Sm. Exot. Bot. v. i. 59. (their Nelumbo, or Ne- 

 lumbium), as in some measure dicotyledonous. The ex- 

 cellent De Candolle, in the Bulletin des Sciences, n. 57, 

 published in 1802, has first rightly considered both as di- 

 cotyledonous, and akin to the Papaveracea of Jussieu, the 

 Linnaean Rhoeadea. 



