NAMES AND OBSERVATIONS ON INDIAN PLANTS. 545 



M. Decandolle's opinion, as well as to the Abyssinian 

 genus, which I had published: — " Non Desmochaetae sed 

 Saltiae species, vid. Catal. PI. Abyssin. in Itin. D. Salt. 

 Cometis nomen restituendum." — R. B. 



M. Guillemin, in the Dictionnaire Classique d' Histoire 

 Naturelle, torn. 4, p. 356, states that M. De Jussieu, who 

 examined, or at least saw, the specimen in M. Delessert's 

 Herbarium, recognised it to belong to Amaranthacea, and 

 that M. Decandolle regarded it as a species of Desmochceta. 

 M. Guillemin himself, in adopting M. Decandolle's opinion 

 proposes to apply to that genus the older name Cometes ; 

 and he adds that in a manuscript note in Burinannus's 

 specimen I have proposed to do the same thing. But from 

 that note, which I have already given verbatim, it appears 

 that my proposing to restore the name Cometes referred to 

 Saltia, and not to Desmochata, to which it was evident to 

 me Cometes did not belong. 



In the Linnean Herbarium the specimen named Cometes, 

 I believe in the writing of the younger Linnaeus, proves to 

 be a plant belonging to Convohulacece, and it is probably a 

 species of Convolvulus or Ipomcea. 



Burm annus (in Mora Indica) has given the specific name 

 of Surattensis to his Cometes, and that name Linnaeus has 

 adopted in his first Mantissa. In the twelfth edition of the 

 Systema Naturae (vol. ii, p. 127), published in the same 

 year, but subsequently to the Mantissa, he changed the 

 specific name to alternijlora, no doubt derived from the 

 account of the inflorescence given both by Burmannus and 

 himself. It is, however, not a very apt name for a plant 

 whose flowers are always in threes, though the common 

 peduncles are generally alternate. I have therefore recurred 

 to the original name. 



Sir James Smith, in a (pencil) note on the specimen in 

 the Linnean Herbarium, though aware that the specimen 

 is not really Cometes, supposes the specific name last given 

 by Linnaeus to have been suggested by it. This might 

 have been the fact had that name been alternifolia, which, 

 when he wrote the note, I have no doubt he believed it to 

 be ; but the actual name alternijlora could not well be 



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