OF PLANTS CALLED COMPOSITE. 261 



base, is necessarily connected with this structure, which 

 seems also peculiarly well adapted to the dense inflo- 

 rescence of Compositse ; the vessels of the corolla and 

 stamina being united and so disposed as to be least liable 

 to suffer by pressure." 



At the date of this publication I certainly had no know- 

 ledge of any similar observations having been previously 

 made : but I now see in M. Cuvier's account of the pro- 

 ceedings of the Institute of France for 1815, that M. Cassini 

 is considered to have anticipated me on this subject, and 

 as he says in " termes non equivoques." What these 

 terms are, appears by a letter I have received from M. Cassini 

 himself, in which he states his claim to rest on the following 

 passage : 



" Chaque fleur hermaphrodite ou male contient cinq 

 etamines, correspondent aux cinq nervures de la Corolle et 

 par consequent alternes avec ses lobes." 



This passage occurs in a Memoir on the Stamina of 

 Compositae, which was read to the Institute of France in 

 July 1813, and first appeared with the substance of that 

 Memoir in the Journal de Physique, said to be for April 

 1814; but the actual date of the publication of which I 

 have reason to believe was somewhat later, and very nearly 

 corresponding with that at which M. de Jussieu was in 

 possession of a copy of my essay containing the observations 

 already quoted. I conclude it is not supposed I could 

 have been acquainted with the passage in the original 

 memoir, unless the report usually made on memoirs read to 

 the Institute should have been printed, and should have 

 actually noticed this passage, or the discovery it is now said 

 to contain. 



But independently of the near equality of dates, I cannot 

 consider my observations as either wholly or even in any C79 

 considerable degree anticipated by the passage in ques- 

 tion. My observations notice not only the disposition of 

 the five vessels in the tube of the corolla, but their rami- 

 fication in the lacinise, by no means a necessary conse- 

 quence of that disposition ; they notice also the existence, 

 in several genera of Composite, of five vessels alternating 



