DE CANDOLLE'S PRODROMUS. 29 



distinct from Thesium. And Darbya, Gray, published in 

 this Journal twelve years ago, is reduced to a subgenus of 

 Comandra, to which we are not disposed to object. But we 

 take the new species of true Comandra ( C. ijallida) to be 

 a mere variety of C. umbellata ; which, by the way, we did 

 not state to be eight or ten feet, but only as many inches in 

 height. De Candolle thinks that the hairs which connect the 

 anthers of Comandra, and of most Thesia also, with the per- 

 ianth, belong to the latter, not to the former, as the generic 

 name implies. Our own observations, and especially some 

 made by Mr. H. J. Clark upon very young flower-buds, con- 

 firm this view. The discovery, announced in this Journal in 

 1854, that the striking genus Buckleya, Torr., is truly dichla- 

 mydeous in the female flowers, proves a capital fact for M. 

 De Candolle ; who draws from it the confident inference that 

 the floral envelope which in all other plants of the order 

 occurs alone, and has the stamens opposite its lobes, is corolla 

 and not calyx, and consequently so in the Loranthacece and 

 ProteacecB also. Our author's views are presented in detail in 

 an article, " Sur la Famille des Santalacese," in the " Biblio- 

 theque Universelle," published last autumn, and they appear 

 wellnigh convincing. An analogous case is found in Zan- 

 thoxylum (only here the suppression is the rare case), Z. 

 Americanmn plainly wanting that which in Z. Carolinianum 

 is the corolla (" Genera Illustr." 2, p. 148). Nyssa offers a 

 good instance of the limb of a calyx so reduced as to have 

 escaped notice until four years ago. For what to De Candolle 

 seem to be petals (p. 622, note in char, of order Santalacece}, 

 were seen to be so, and the observations recorded in the fifth 

 volume of the " Memoirs of the American Academy," p. 336, 

 and afterwards extended in the " Manual Bot. U. S.," ed. 2, 

 p. 162 (1856). It is singular that De Candolle should re- 

 main so uncertain of the place of Nyssa in the Natural Sys- 

 tem. If he will compare it and Mastixia with Cornus he will 

 surely be convinced that Nyssa is a true Cornaceous genus. 

 So of Cevallia, the true place of which our author seems not 

 to know, although given in the " Flora of North America " 

 many years ago, under the sanction (we may add) of the very 



