10 PITTONIA. 
he had placed in Echidiocarya, leaving the original plant 
alone to represent the genus he had named. ‘This he has 
done upon a supposition that the separation of the four nutlets 
into pairs, by a partial union of two stipes, is of generic im- 
port. That character is, as I shall show farther on, not only in- 
constant in the species, but even almost exceptional in the indi- 
vidual specimen when well developed. He is likewise unaware 
that in a very different plant which he has placed in Plagio- 
bothrys, i. e., Sonnea hispida, the nutlets are not occasionally 
but always joined in pairs by their soft caruncular stipes, and 
so fall away from their gynobase. In even that long known 
species whose latest synonym is Krynitzkia Jamesii, the nut- 
lets, far enough from the stipitate, are separated into pairs by 
a manifest interval: so that no kind of pairing off of nutlets 
can be construed as meaning, generically, anything at all. 
As for the surface characters of nutlets, Amsinckia should 
have taught authors the worthlessness of them, when generi- 
cally considered, in the subtribe Eritrichiee. None of the 
genera are better defined or more natural than this. The 
limits of no other have remained so entirely unquestioned : 
but the nutlets vary, through the different species, from a 
polished and shining smoothness to strongly rugose, sharply 
muricate, and even echinate. 
In the genus which I here propose as new under the name 
^Allocarya the kind of diversity referred to is somewhat 
greater than in Amsinckia; but the species are far more 
numerous, and all of them agree admirably in that best mark 
of a good and natural genus, the habit; to which there is to 
be conjoined a character very rare in the order, if not indeed 
unique, that of the lower leaves being not only opposite, but 
distinetly connate-perfoliate. But, to return to matters ap- 
pertaining to the fruit: we have in Allocarya fruiting calyx 
and pedieels of a nature most unlike those of Plagiobothrys 
or any other of the various groups of plants formerly included 
+ In allusion to the extreme diversity of the species as regards the 
surface of the nutlets, 
