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currence of composite medullary rays — all of which are characters 
not found in many families and coinciding only in that of the 
Ternstroemiaceae, Staphyleaceae and in some of the Olacineae. But the 
two last could be excluded by differences in several other characters. 
The objection might perhaps be made, that in our “Mikrographie 
des Holzes” we have studied only a comparatively small number 
of families, viz. 33, up to this date, and that it would by no means 
be impossible, that afterwards another family might be found coin- 
ciding as well or even better than that of the Vernstroemiaceae 
with the characters found in Aptiana. But we are going right through 
the system, following the Genera Plantarum of BENTHAM and HOOKER. 
Thus this objection implies the probability, that in a region of the 
system far distant from the Ternstroemiaceae a family will be 
found showing an anatomical structure of the wood coinciding in 
almost every particular with that of the Yernstroemiaceae. Our 
experience in wood matters leads us to tax this probability as 
infinitely small. But we do not know what lengths some botanists 
might go in such a matter. The argumentation stated above thus led 
us to the scientific conviction that Aptiana belongs to the Ternstroe- 
miaced. 
Having reached this point, we tried, making use of the analytical 
key for the identification of the species in our Mikrographie and 
comparing the descriptions of the species whether some nearer ally of 
Aptiana than Hurya acuminata could be found. If the reader does 
the same, he will be led to Hurya japonica and E. glabra. There- 
fore we think that the genus Hurya may safely be considered as a 
most near ally of Aptiana, leaving it undecided whether both could 
be united with each other in the genus Hurya, which however to 
us does not seem improbable. 
In conclusion we want to say some words on the work of Mrs. 
Sroprs and on the character of the observations made by us. In the 
foreground must be placed the fact that for the whole of our know- 
ledge of Aptiana we are indebted to, the careful work of Mrs. 
Sroers. But we can go farther and trust, that the reader will not 
have mistaken our work for a criticism of Mrs. Srorrs’ paper. If 
we had not indeed considered this paper as a very fair specimen 
of what at this time may be called good anatomical work, we could 
not have written as we have done. That bad work does not produce 
eood results is a truth, which we by no means want to prove. We 
do not criticize a special paper, but the method or rather the want 
of method still prevailing in almost all anatomical work published at 
this day. And we think that we have shown how a research on a 
