84 TOURNEFORTS DESCRIPTION. 



same genus are the result of a transformation, why may 

 we not assert as much of the genera of a family, or the 

 families of an order ? 



Thus we should arrive, step by step, at an unique type, 

 not only for the vegetable kingdom, but for vegetables and 

 animals, including man himself, and realise, to some extent, 

 the ideal of the Greeks, unity in variety. 



Be it acknowledged, however, that we have no desire to 

 rise to so lofty an elevation. The potato-plant unknown 

 to the ancients, inasmuch as it is a native of the New 

 World has not been found to lose its character since its 

 introduction into the ancient continent j its congener, the 

 nightshade an old native, like every bad herb accom- 

 panies it everywhere ; but its fibrous roots are absolutely 

 virgin of every farinaceous tubercule. 



Though the nightshade is common everywhere, Tournefort 

 was the first to describe it with complete accuracy. That 

 great observer even specifies various peculiarities which most 

 of our botanists omit from their descriptions. Thus, he 

 rightly remarks, that the peduncles branch out so as to 

 form a kind of umbel, and do not emerge, as is usually 

 the case, from the axils of the leaves, but a little below, 

 from the very branches of the stem. He was also the first 

 to note and it was a veritable discovery that the white 

 flowers of the nightshade, grouped in threes to eights, are 

 each formed of a single cup-shaped leaf, in other words, 

 that the corolla is monophyllous, and slightly bell-like or 

 campanulated. Nor does he forget to describe the disposi- 



