10 CHL0RI3 BOREALI-AMERICANA. 



sented by Lindley, namely, " ovary seated in a fleshy disk,"* and 

 has been copied by Endlicher into the description of each genus 

 in the form of " Ovarium disco carnoso insidens." f But I can 

 find no disk whatever, either in Empetrum nigrum or E. rubrum, 

 or indeed in any other plant of the family. Another mistake, re- 

 lating to the insertion of the seed and the pericarpic direction of 

 the embryo, appears also to have originated with Professor Don. 

 He characterized the seed in the whole order as erect or ascending 

 (at least by implication), and the radicle of the embryo as inferior, — 

 characters which have been adopted without scrutiny by succeeding 

 systematic writers, but which, though true as respects Corema, 

 Ceratiola, and Oakesia, are not applicable to Empetrum itself. The 

 only correct representation of the insertion of the seed in Empe- 

 trum is that in the well known Genera Plantarum Flora Germaniee 

 of the younger Nees von Esenbeck. | The seed in E. nigrum (as 

 also in E. rubrum) is, in fact, suspended from the upper inner angle 

 of the bony cell, just as the artist has represented in Fig. 19 of the 

 plate in the work referred to. But in the longitudinal section of the 

 seed, at Fig. 20, the artist has depicted the embryo with the 

 radicle inferior, and the cotyledons next the hilum ; or, in other 

 words (the seed being anatropous), has made the cotyledons, instead 

 of the radicle, jjoint to the micropyle ! which is of course an impos- 

 sibility. Endlicher has cited the plate without correcting the incon- 

 gruity, but, probably supposing that the mistake regarded the seed 

 rather than the embryo, has rejected what was really correct in the 



* Nat. System, ed. 2, p. 117, and Vegetable Kingdom, p. 285. 



t Genera Plantarum, p. 1 106. 



f Even here the structure is misapprehended in the text ; the drupe being called 

 a berry, the pyrenae, seeds, the hilum, an internal chalaza, &c. The correct view is 

 suggested, however, in a parenthesis at the close. 



