11 



INTRODUCTION. 



each sex are found in each receptacle. The character of the genus given by Blume in 

 his Bijdragen shows that he must have adopted Vahl's definition without examination 

 of the flowers ; for, according to Blume, as to Vahl, the male flowers of the genus are 

 triandrous. Blume mentions that the males have a rudimentary pistil, which, as a matter 

 of fact, is the case in only a small number of species. Eoxburgh is the first writer who 

 attempts to describe the flowers of each species, and in a note attached to his definition 

 of the genus in his Flora Indica he says: — "I have examined minutely the florets of 

 nearly the whole of the species, and found only two instances in which they were not 

 androgynous, and by far the greater part are monandrous." He therefore puts Ficus into 

 Monoecia Monandria. Gasparrini and Miquel were the next botanists who appear to have 

 made a careful study of the flowers of the genus. In the year 1844 Gasparrini 

 published a remarkable paper, in which he divided all the species of Ficus known to him 

 into eight genera, viz. Ficus proper, Caprifieus, Tenorea (a name subsequently changed by 

 himself to Macrophthulma), UrosHgma, Visiania, Cystoyyne, Galoglychia, and Covellia. His 

 first genus, Ficus proper, contained only one species, namely the common eatable Fig of 

 Southern Europe. His second genus, Caprifaus, contained only the Caprifig, which, as 

 Linnaeus had maintained nearly a hundred years before, and as the most recent obser- 

 vations have demonstrated, is only the male of the plant of which the eatable Fi°- is the 



female. Gasparrini's genus Tenorea contained only a single species, the F. pumila of 



Linnaeus. His fourth genus, Urostigma, is the only one of his groups which has stood the 



test of experience. It contained all the species known to Gasparrini of the section as 

 defined in the following pages. Into his fifth genus, called Visiania, Gasparrini put only a 

 single plant, viz. F. elastica, a species referred by all subsequent writers to Urostig 



The sixth genus contained a single species, F leucosticta, a species which I have 

 referred to Covellia. Galoglychia, Gasparrini's seventh genus, consisted of two species, 

 which, being American, lie beyond the scope of the present undertaking. 



To Gasp 



eighth genus, Covellia, he referred only a single species, of which he says he had neither 

 seen male flowers nor ripe seeds. 



During the same year (1844) in which Gasparrini's new classification was published, 

 Miquel, m Am. des Sciences Naturelles, series III, I, p. 31, working chiefly on some of 

 Roxburgh's descriptions, suggested that the species described in the Flora Indica of that 

 author ought not to be considered as forming a natural homogeneous group, but as divis- 

 ible into very distinct sections ; and in the same paper he proceeds to distribute twenty- 

 hve of them into the two sections Carina and Sycocarpus, while on one of Roxburgh's 



species (* oppositifolia) he founds the new genus Sycomorphe. The basis of Miquel . K „ 

 ot Gasparnni's) classification, was the structure and disposition of the flowers. Three years 

 later (,, tn 847) Miquel began to publish, in Hooker's London Journal of Botany, a 

 monograph of all the species of the old genus Ficus, and as the result of his extended 

 study of 4 he established the following genera :- Urostigma, including 167 species; PU, 



