COMPOUND FLOWERS. 237 



abortive marginal flowers, and Hydrangea hortens'iSi 

 Sm. Ic. Pict. t. 1 2, has scarcely any others. Cornus 

 sanguined, Engl. Bot. t. 249, has a naked cyme, 

 C. Suecica, t. 310, an umbel accompanied by coloured 

 bracteas, or, as Linnaeus judged, acoloured involucrum, 

 proving the close affinity between these two modes of 

 inflorescence. 



Notwithstanding all this, I presume to dissent from 

 the above hypothesis, as offering too great violence to 

 Nature, and swerving from that beautiful and philoso- 

 phical Linnrean principle, of characterizing genera by 

 the fructification alone ; a principle which those who 

 are competent to the subject at all, will, I believe, never 

 find to fail. The seeds and flowers of the umbelliferous 

 family are quite sufficient for our purpose, while the 

 involucrum is very precarious and changeable; often 

 deficient, often immoderately luxuriant, in the same 

 genus. In the cymose plants every body knows the 

 real parts of fructification to be abundantly adequate, 

 the involucrum being of small moment ; witness that 

 most natural genus Cornus. For all these, and other 

 reasons, to particularize which would lead me too far, 

 I have, p. 179, reckoned the Umbel and Cyme modes 

 of flowering, and not themselves aggregate flowers. 



