146 The Botanical Gazette. [April, 
roseate rays showing even the styles (for in Aster the ray- 
flowers are fertile), the discoid or central flowers, are all 
clearly depicted. This is true not merely in a single head, 
but in them all, without exception. The young buds, show- 
ing only the involucral scales, are very natural, while in the 
older buds the rays are erect, not having fully expanded, and 
all the discoid flowers show only their small rounded tops. 
‘In the fully developed heads the central flowers have opened, 
and the syngenesious stamens show their yellow anthers in 
the outer row or rows, as one head is older than another. 
Herein the artists have shown their wonderful skill. Their 
models are the living plants, and every flower has its sepa- 
rate pattern, no two being exactly alike. They are not all 
cast in one mould. 
In the older heads the central flowers have all opened, the 
stamens cover the surface, and the rays are incurved WI 
withering tips. In this species, as well as in all the others, the 
magnified portions have been done with the greatest acclr 
racy, and afford a fine object lesson. An involucral scale 
shows the glandular pubescence, and a floret, enlarged thirty 
times shows the hairy akene with the pappus of capillary 
bristles upwardly barbed, while the tips of the five-lobed 
corolla have their peculiar rosy hue, so different from that of 
the rest of the floret. The stamens pointed at the top @ 
the forked style are all there too. The systematic analysis of 
this Aster can easily be made from the model, so perfect '5 
its construction. 
Ihave thought it best to give these details in the cas¢ of we 
plant, so difficult to produce, but, in the case of the others, whi 
were as carefully studied, to give the important features : 
only a few. I found the same fidelity in matters © tal 
slightest detail. Sixteen species I examined by saa 
comparison, besides making a more general observation ° 
large number. I sought faithfully to find some €ff0ty Ai 
thing systematically wrong. A fair criticism should eee ' 
whatever faults may exist, but I failed to find such fa “ 
with the exception of a very few cases, where some ee 
Was not quite like that of the type species. The artists 
plants, aud in the few cases where some slight de 
quite typical of the species, I am confident that thi 
to the fact that variation is apt to occur in plants 4? gc 
