178 DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OF QUERCUS AND CASTANEA. 
logical one." Tt is incontestable that these remarks are as applicable 
to the appendages of a fruit-involucre as to those of a true pericarp, 
if not more so. Furthermore, we meet with the greatest diversity in 
this respect in species which every one unhesitatingly refers to Quercus. 
We find the capsuliform involucre smooth-zoned in Q. lanceifolia, 
Roxb., tuberculato-muriculate in Q. cuspidata, Thunb., distinctly echi- 
nate in Q. fagiformis, Jungh. There are the ringed cupules of Q. an- 
nulata, Sm., Q. glauca, Thunb., etc., and the ordinary squamate ones 
of the larger number of Oaks; the latter presenting considerable sub- 
ordinate variations, both in form—from the flat disk-shaped cup of Q. 
Skinneri, Benth., merely supporting the acorn, to the hemispherical one 
of Q. cornea, Lour., which embraces all but its top—and also in 
clothing; from the appressed scales of the last-mentioned species to 
the dense, filiform, rigid, at length recurved ones of the curious Califor- 
nian Q. echinacea, Torr., figured in the Pacific Railway Reports published 
by the United States Government (35th parallel, t. xiv. ; Washington, 
1857), where there is a mainfest approach to the Chestnuts. And I 
have in my possession a fine Japanese Oak, given me by Mr. J. G. Veitch, 
undescribed, I believe, when found by him, but probably since named 
by Dr. Lindley, with downy sinuate leaves like the Rodores, the cup of 
which is covered with long, subulate, flat, scarioso-membranaceous 
scales. When such differences exist amongst the species of Quercus, 
we might, à priori, expect similar ones in the conterminous genus 
Castanea ; and, although all the species hitherto referred there have 
echinate involucres, that is no reason why those yet to be disco- 
vered should; nor is it philosophical to exclude a species for failing 
in this character; for assuredly we are not justified in attaehing & 
higher degree of importance to variations in the surface of a capsuli- 
form involucre than that which is accorded to similar diversities in a 
cupular one. From the observation of Blume, above quoted, I think 
it likely, indeed, that on a general revision of the Order, some of the 
so-called Oaks will prove to be Chestnuts. In Castanea vulgaris, Lam., 
C. concinna, Champ., and most of the Indian species, the aculei, often 
branched, completely cover the involucre; but in C. echidnocarpa, Hook.f. 
and Thoms., which I assume to belong to the genus to which it is re- 
ferred by its learned discoverers, for I have not been able to examine 
the seed myself, the involucre (which I should judge from my specimens 
to split irregularly) is distinctly zoned ; the aculei, which donot occupy — 
