MALVACEÆ. 89 
America have been distinguished, which have carpels tapering at 
the apex into a sort of short hollow beak, whose cavity 1s sepa- 
rated by an interior processus horizontally directed. If to this 
Althea officinalis. 

Fie. 141. 
Floriferous braneh (+). 
character were always added the dehiscence of the carpels into two 
valves and the reduction of the bracts of the involucel to two or one, 
or if they were even totally absent, this genus Callirhoe might be 
kept distinct; but their inconstancy makes it seem preferable to us to 
make it only a section of the genus Malva. 
