veins scarcely perceptible, slightly ciliated when young, at length 
perfectly smooth. Heaps or rLowers globose, borne on peduncles » 
about half an inch long, which are sometimes solitary, or two together 
in each axil, sometimes arranged in loose axillary racemes, shorter 
than the leaves, each head about three lines in diameter, bearing 
nearly thirty yellow flowers. Bracts at the base of the peduncles very 
small, bracteola under the flowers none. Catyx divided almost to 
the- base into five awn-shaped white divisions, slightly dilated, and 
yellowish at the top. Perats five, cohering to the middle, in a 
narrow bell-shaped corolla, white at the base, yellow at the top. 
STAMENS very numerous (above sixty) more than twice the length 
of the petals; the filaments flexuose, smooth. POLLEN GRAINS nume- 
rous, very small, the surface, as in most Acacias, beautifully divided 
- into ten compartments. Ovary oblong, nearly smooth, with a long 
flexuose style, laterally attached near the apex of the ovary. OvuLEs 
about six. Pop unknown. 
PopuLar AND GeoerapuicaL Notice. Of the numerous groups 
of plants now called Mimosex, Linneus knew scarcely more than 
fifty species, which, with the exception of Prosopis spicigera and 
Adenanthera pavonina, he considered as forming but one genus, under 
the name of Mimosa; and his example continued to be followed until 
Willdenow came to this part of his Species Plantarum, when finding 
the number of species inconveniently large, already above two hun- 
dred, he, in 1807, limited the genus Mimosa, as Tournefort had done, 
to the species with articulated pods; adopted Inga, of Plumier, for 
those which have monadelphous stamens and a pulpy pod; established 
two new small genera, Desmanthus and Schranckia; and collected all 
the rest under Tournefort’s name of Acacia. Eighteen years later 
Decandolle published the second volume of his Prodromius; the num- 
ber of Mimosezx he described was very nearly five hundred, which he 
distributed amongst Willdenow’s genera, adding only four small ones, 
Entada, Gagnebina, Darlingtonia, and Lagonychium. At this mo- 
ment, after another lapse of fifteen years, the number of Mimosez of 
which specimens exist in herbaria, amounts, probably, to nearly three 
times the number known to Decandolle in 1825. The several small 
genera of Willdenow, Decandolle, and others, have partaken but little 
of this increase; the true Mimosas, with articulate pods, (as in the — 
Sensitive plant) are now very numerous, it is true, but the genus is 
well defined, and will probably remain undivided. Inga, however, 
which was founded on two characters, which by no means correspond 
