290 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



have limited them, are nearly forty in nnmber, are, with two or 

 three exceptions, of American origin. The /jnarcanliecv have the 

 most extended area. Of the twenty-nine genera we preserve in this 

 series, six are peculiar to the new world and seventeen to the old, 

 six, consequently, are common to both. Certain of them may be 

 seen advancing as far as the north of Asia, the Cape, and New 

 Zealand, the C'orynocarpus and Rhus for example, found in Europe 

 and at the north of China and Japan, and extending in America as 

 far north as south. The genus Pktachia, so richly represented in 

 the Mediterranean region, the Canaries, and the East, is again met 

 with in Mexico, and we have pointed it out in the Antilles and 

 Venezuela. Sorindeia, as we have limited it, inhabits the Indian 

 Archipelago, Madagascar, tropical western Africa, Mexico, and Chili. 

 There are species of Smodingium, both in Mexico ^ and at the Cape. 

 In short, this scries comprises nearly three hundred species, divided 

 amongst its twenty-nine genera, and nearly a hundred of them are 

 American. It is almost superfluous to add that the tropical species, 

 useful either bj^ their fruit or any other part, have followed man in 

 all the warm regions of the globe : such as Anacardium occidentale, 

 Mangifera indica, Schlnus MoUc, many Sumachs, etc. As much 

 may be said of several Sjjondias, which are fruit trees, the S. dulcis, 

 furpurea, cytherea, these natives of one world having in tliis manner 

 passed into the other long ago. 



Affinities. — They are numerous, on account of the manner in 

 which the family has been constituted. That with tlie Jmjlandcœ is 

 striking as to the organs of vegetation, leaves, odour, and properties ; 

 but these plants have been separated from the Tcrchinthaccce, prin- 

 cipally on account of their naked male flowers, in catkins, and their 

 female flower having inferior ovary with a basilar placenta and a 

 single orthotropous ovule. By the Bursereœ the Terehinthaccœ are 

 nearly confounded with the Uutaceœ, such as Ficrmmiia, Irving ia^ 

 Spathelia, etc. It has been said,^ with reason, that apart from their 

 balsamic propei'ties, difl'erhig in bitterness or the richness in volatile 

 essence from the genera we have mentioned, the Biirscrcv are not 

 distinguished by any other technical character than the absence 



' H. Bx. in Adaiisonia, xi. 182. = B. II. Geii. 321. 



