142 Mr. J. Miers on the genus Witheringia. 
Sendtner has since come to a more decided conclusion, by pro- 
posing Martius’s plant before alluded to as the type of a new 
genus, which he calls Athenea ; but I am not aware upon what 
grounds he holds it distinct from Witheringia, nor can I 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 reasons, 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, 1 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 Martius’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 Aenistus 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 Solanacee 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 
