271 NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



or shrubs sometimes spinous. Their leaves are alternate, pctiolate, 

 without stipules, regular or more or less unsymmetrical at the base, 

 entire, dentate or lobed, penninerved or digitinerved at the base. 

 The flowers 1 are disposed in cymes or glomerules more or less 

 compound in the axil of the leaves, and each is ordinarily articu- 

 lated at the summit of its pedicel. 



This family was established by R. Brown 2 in 1810. Of the 

 genera referred to it at the present time, some, such as Nyssa, Cono- 

 carpus, Bacida, Terminalia, Chuncoa, and Pamea, were attributed 

 by A. L. de Jussieu to his Order Elœagnaceœ, 3 and others, such as 

 Cacoucia, Combretum, and Oniera, to that of Onagracece.* Alangium 

 figures at the head of the same author's following Order Myrtaceœ. 

 Of the latter, De Candolle, in 1828, made a separate Order, 

 Alangiece, 5 which Lindley 6 retained, adding to it Ttqyelos, for which 

 Jussieu 7 had, in 1825, founded a family, Ni/ssacece. Recently, 

 Nyssa on the one hand and Alangium and Marlea on the other, have 

 been ranged, by Bentham and Hooker, 8 in the family Cornacece, 

 with which their affinities are incontestable. 9 At the same time, 

 since in this family the ovules have the micropyle turned inwards, 

 Nyssa, in which we have determined 10 it to be exterior, would not 

 belong to it ; and if, as we believe, its direction is at first the same 

 in Alangium, and becomes lateral only by subsequent torsion, 

 Alangium and Nyssa are not so near to Cornus as to the Araliaceœ 

 and Combretacece. To the latter rather than to the former we pro- 

 visionally refer them, on account of the characters of their andrcecium, 

 of their inflorescence, of their style, and of their fruit. At one 

 period, among the Combretacece , were known only plants with ovules 

 inserted near the summit of the ovary. Later it was seen that their 

 placenta was parietal and centripetal, and that the ovules were, in 

 reality, inserted right and left of the upper portion of the placenta. 



(Marlea) ; Suppl. i. 341.— Benth. Fl. Songk. * Op. cit. 320. 



138 ; Fl. Austral, iii. 386 (Marlea).— Tul. Ann. 5 Prodi: iii. 203, Ord. 77. 



Sc. Nat. sér. 4, vi. 105.— H. Bn. Adansnnia, x. 6 Veg. Kingd. (1846) 719, Ord. 275 (Alangi- 



183 (Marlea). — Walp. Ann. i. 974 (Marlea) ; acta). 



iv. 819 (Rhytidandra). 7 Diet. Sc. Nat. xxxv. 267.— Endl. Gen. 328 



1 Generally whitish. (Gen. Santalaceis AJIiu.). 



3 Frodr. Fl. N.-Bol. i. 351 ; Flind. Voy. ii. 8 Gen. 949, 952. 



548 ; Misc. Work* (ed. Benn.), i. 19. » H. Bn. Adansonia, v. 196. 



3 Gen. (1789) 74, Ord. 1. '» Adansonia, loc. cit. 198. 



