143 Mr. J. Miers on the genus Witheringia. 



Sendtner has since come to a more decided conclusion, by pro- 

 jDOsing Martius^s plant before alluded to as the type of a new 

 genus, which he calls Athencea ; but I am not aware upon what 

 grounds he holds it distinct from Witheringia, nor can 1 learn 

 that he has given any determined limits of this latter genus. 

 From observations lately made, it appears to me that farther 

 uncertainty on this point need not be entertained, and I propose 

 therefore, to offer my i"easons, founded on the facts now demon- 

 strated, for justifying the conclusions thus formed. In Sir Wm. 

 Hooker's most valuable herbarium there exists among Goudot's 

 collection from Columbia, a plant which appeared to me to be a 

 Saracha, except that its habit is rather more suffruticose and 

 erect than most species of that genus, and its flowers smaller and 

 fewer than usual : on examining this more attentively and com- 

 paring it carefully with the figure and description of L'Heritier's 

 plant, I could not do otherwise than conclude that it was very 

 closely related to his Witheringia solanacea, and as such may well 

 serve, in the absence of the original, as a substitute for the type 

 of what he intended as that genus. I have also compared this 

 Columbian plant with the descriptions given by Prof. Kunth of 

 several fruticose species, which he arranged in the same genus, 

 and at the same time have examined several analogous plants 

 from intertropical America, either closely allied or nearly iden- 

 tical with these last-mentioned species ; and finally, I have com- 

 pared these with the Witheringia hirsuta, Gardn., a species that 

 does not seem to differ from the W. picta, Mart., collating this 

 at the same time with Von Martins' s excellent description and 

 figure of this latter species before quoted : all these forms ex- 

 hibit a gradation from Saracha on the one hand to Acnistus on 

 the other. But Witheringia, according to modern authors, is 

 made to embrace a number of heterogeneous species, and it is 

 obvious that, without taking into account L'Heritier's plant, all 

 the remaining species in the herbaceous section enumerated by 

 Dr. Walpers (Repert. iv. 29) do not belong to that genus, being 

 mostly referable to a very distinct section of Solanum, probably 

 a good subgenus. 



Throughout the vegetable kingdom we find individuals pos- 

 sessing aberrant characters, and exhibiting an intermediate state 

 between the artificial limits of our botanical distributions, or par- 

 taking of their mutual extremes, and this is as fully apparent in 

 the Bolanaceae as in any other family. Thus, many experienced 

 botanists have found it difficult to determine whether certain in- 

 dividuals should be referred to Petunia or Salpiglossis, plants not 

 only belonging to separate genera, but hitherto placed in distinct 

 natural orders. In like manner it may be doubted whether cer- 

 tain plants should be referred to Physalis, when they are seen 



