OBSERVATIONS ON THE SPECIES OF ZANNICHELLIA. 273 
ticulate raised line; the anterior margin more decidedly denticulate 
than in the Gresford plant; and the style half the length of the car- 
pel, and variable in direction. In specimens gathered by myself in 
1832, near Cambridge (see fig. 19), the stigma is peltate, concave, 
papillose, and irregularly toothed ; tag anthers four-celled ; the fruit 
and carpels, which are not mature, equally sessile as in the foregoing ; 
the margins denticulate, and the style similar in relative length. Tf 
also possess specimens from Dover (see fig. 20), in which the stigma 
(a) is peltate, concave, papillose, and irregularly toothed ; the fruit 
(b) nearly sessile ; the carpels on rather longer, but still very short, 
pedicles ; the dorsal margin with three denticulate borders, the cen- 
tral one most prominent, and the others somewhat interrupted ; the 
anterior margin distinctly denticulate ; and the style half the length 
of the carpel, and variable in direction. The anthers in the latter 
specimen I was unable to detect. . In all these specimens the style is 
enlarged at the base, and bears a projecting line, which is continued 
along the middle of the face of the carpel. 
The above results appear to militate strangely against the observa- 
tion of M. Steinheil, that the entire stigma is accompanied by four- 
celled anthers, and the toothed one with two-celled anthers ; since in 
all our specimens, whatever are the number of the cells, the stigma is 
toothed. They all, likewise, coincide in the relative length of the 
style to the carpel, in the carpels being almost sessile, and their mar- 
gins nearly similar in denticulation. Now, as it is admitted by Stein- 
heil that the anther-cells are variable, in one instance at least, in the 
form with four cells, by the suppression of two of them, why may not 
the contrary be admitted, that the two-celled anthers are also liable to 
vary by an increase of one or more additional cells? And from the 
above this seems plausible; and as all our specimens agree in two 
other characters of Steinheil’s dentata, viz. the toothed stigma and the 
style half the length of the carpel, we necessarily feel disposed to 
consider them all as forms of his Z. dentata, notwithstanding the va- 
riation in the number of the anther-cells. Without arrogantly pre- 
suming to decide confidently on a point in which the most skilful bo- 
tanists are at issue, it may be suggested that those who possess the 
facility of examining living specimens, by which alone can the ques- 
tion be decided, would hasten to ascertain whether the only characters 
which confessedly appear at all constant, are in reality sufficiently so 
to constitute two good and distinct species, viz. the toothed stigma, 
and the style half the length of the carpel, in dentata, and the entire 
stigma, and the style nearly equal to the carpel, in palustris. 
VOL. IX., NO. XXVI. 35 
