126 Mr. J. Miers on the Styrace?e, 



on account of their possessing an embryo with cotyledons shorter 

 than the radicle^ and once more suggested their affinity with 

 MeliaccfB, showing likewise their close analogy with Strigilia of 

 Cavanilles {Foveolaria, R. & P.), which genus he considered to 

 belong unquestionably to that family. He also united the se- 

 veral genera of his second section of the Ebenacece into one genus 

 St/inplocos, which he held to be the type of a distinct family, 

 allied in some respects to Ebenacece, but having a relation towards 

 the Myrtacece or the Aurantiacea (the last section of his Hespe- 

 7'ida), and distinguished from all others of his former class by 

 its ovary, at first superior and free, but afterwards inferior and 

 invested by the persistent calyx, and signalized by its embryo 

 wdth an extremely long filiform radicle enclosed in the axis of the 

 fleshy albumen. From this it is evident that this great botanist, 

 in that early stage of carpological science, displayed great acumen 

 in indicating the true affinities of Stt/7-ax; and although the 

 facts then known were too few to warrant any positive determi- 

 nation on the subject, he clearly perceived the ordinal distinc- 

 tion between the Styracea and Symplocacece, which succeeding 

 botanists have been led to confound together. 



The elder Richard (1808) confirmed the views of Jussieu in 

 regard to Styrax, and first established the family of the Shjraceae 

 (Analyse du Fruit, p. 48), which the latter had only indicated ; 

 but in doing so, he committed a great mistake, and laid the 

 foundation of the fallacy which has since prevailed, by associating 

 Symplocus with it, into which genus Hopea and its congeners 

 were now absorbed. 



Jussieu (in 1817), in his memoir on the Meliacece (Mem. 

 Mus. iii. 439) repeated his former views of the affinity of Stijrax 

 and Foveolaria with that family. 



Kunth (in 1818) entirely adopted the conclusions of Richard 

 in his description of the order Styracea (Nov. Gen. et Sp. iii. 

 256). 



The elder DeCandolle (in 1824), in his celebrated ' Prodromus' 

 (i. 621), adopted the views of Jussieu only as regards Strigilia, 

 which he arranged in Meliace<p. 



D. Don (in 1825), following the indication of Jussieu, sepa- 

 rated the Symplocacece as a distinct family, and afterwards (in 

 1828) withdrew from the StyracecB the genus Halesia, making it 

 the type of a new order Halesiacece (Jameson^sJourn. Dec. 1828), 

 — a view sanctioned by the adhesion of Link in the following 

 year (Handb. i. 667). 



Adr. Jussieu (in 1830), after much attention to the study of 

 the Meliacece, of which order he contributed his excellent Mono- 

 graph, came to a conclusion somewhat different from that of his 

 father, before mentioned; he showed (Mem. Mus. xix. 184) that 



