i34 Mr. J. Miers on the Styracese, 



ground of distinction, because it is imbricated in both cases. 

 3. It is not true, as I had stated, that the stamens are uniserial 

 iu Styracea and pluriserial in Symplocacea. 4. The feat are I 

 had impHed, of the anthers being hnear and dorsally attached to 

 broad filaments for nearly their whole length in Styracece, and as 

 being small, rounded, without connective, and slenderly affixed 

 on the thread-like apex of the filament in Symplucacece, is not 

 tenable. 5. The character given by me, that the Styracece may 

 be distinguished from the other group by a superior ovary with 

 three incomplete dissepiments, and a central placentation free 

 from the style, cannot be maintained. 6. It is not correct to 

 affirm that the fruit in Styracece contains a solitary one- celled 

 putamen with a single erect seed. I will consider these objec- 

 tions in succession, solely in reference to facts, premising, how- 

 ever, that the differential ordinal characters, as sketched by me 

 in the ' Vegetable Kingdom,^ in that early stage of the inquiiy, 

 were derived mostly from my observations upon Strigilia and 

 Pamphilia. I had not then seen Halesia, which, from the very 

 discrepant characters of authors, appeared to me a doubtful genus 

 of the order, so much so as to have been made the type of a 

 distinct family by Don and Endlicher. Now that I am acquainted 

 w^th the singular structure of that genus, my previous ordinal 

 character will require modification ; but this structure, instead 

 of militating against my views, only tends to widen much further 

 the differences existing between the two families under con- 

 sideration. 



Upon the first objection I will observe that, although it be 

 true that the tubular and entirely free calyx which belongs to 

 Styrax, Strigilia, Cyrta, Pamphilia, and Foveolaria does not 

 exist in Halesia and Pterostyrax, this fact is of little importance 

 in an ordinal point of view, in the presence of other more essen- 

 tial characters ; for in some unquestionable natural orders, the 

 Melastomacea for instance, the calyx, though usually adnate, is 

 very often free. But this admission does not destroy the distinc- 

 tive character of the Symplocacece, in having a nearly inferior 

 plurilocular ovary, that is to say, its being enclosed within an 

 adnate calyx from the earliest stage of its development up to 

 the period of the ripening of the fruit. In Pterostyrax, on the 

 authority of Zuccarini, the ovary is acknowledged to be half 

 superior, as I have found it in Halesia, in which genus its su- 

 perior moiety is free, rising above the staminiferous disk iu a 

 conical form ; the calyx is at first so loosely adherent to the 

 lower part of the ovary, that it is easily separable from it by the 

 utroduction of a blunt point. In Styrax and Strigilia, how- 

 ever, the ovary is wholly superior, although I have observed iu 

 Styrax officinale and in Strigilia ovata that the base of the ovaiy 



