_ resemblance still more completely ; inasmuch as t 
__ have very rarely, or never, beheld, 
PLATE CCCCXXIV. 
POLYGALA MICRANTHA. 
Small-flowered Milkwort. 
CLASS XVII. ORDER IIL 
DIADELPHIA OCTANDRIA. Two Brotherhoods. Eight Chives. 
ESSENTIAL GENERIC CHARACTER. 
Catyx 5-phyllus, foliolis duobus aleeformibus, EmpaLemMenT 5-leaved, with two of the 
coloratis. Legumen obcordatum, bilo- leaves like wings, coloured. Pod inversely 
culare, 
heart-shaped, two-celled. 
SPECIFIC CHARACTER, &c. 
PotyGaLa, virgata, floribus imberbibus ax- Mitxwort, twiggy, with beardless axillary- 
illari-sessilibus solitariis subdistantibus fo- sessile solitary rather distant flowers which 
lio brevioribus, foliis alternis subremotis are shorter than the leaf, and alternate 
internodio longioribus subulatisque. remotish awl-shaped leaves, longer than 
the space they are distant from each other. 
Potyeara (micrantha) floribus imberbibus axillari-sessilibus, foliis linearibus mucronatis. Thund- 
Prod, 121,— Willd. Sp. Pl. 3. 892. 
nase 
REFERENCE TO THE PLATE. 
* 
The empalement. ‘ 
The same magnified. 
The keel magnified. _ 
One of the wings. 
The same magnified. 
The chives. ° 
The same magnified. 
The pointal. 
The same magnified. 
PLN ORR? P & 
OE 
Twer is an elegance and a grace in the habit and appearance of this Polygala, which in a great measure 
compensates for its trifling flowers, It forms a small, and but little branched, twiggy shrub; isa 
native of the Cape of Good Hope; and belongs to the Heisteria division] of the genus. We do 
hot know that it has ever been figured before ; but, notwithstanding the short character given by Thun- 
berg, have little doubt of its being the plant he intended for P. micrantha. The honour of intro- 
ducing it, and also some other shrubby Polygalz, into this country, is due to G. Hibbert, Esq., from 
whose choice collection at Clapham our figure was taken. 
Polygala micrantha continues flowering the greatest part of the year, winter as well as summer, is 
avery hardy green-house plant, and is propagated by cuttings in the usual way. 
If we were to consider the flowers as resupinate, and perhaps they really are so, what we have called 
the keel would become the standard, and the small appendage which is a part of it below would answer 
as its keel, The expanded flowers of this species, and also those of P. stipulacea of our 363d plate, 
viewed in front, very remarkably resemble in outling, and almost in size, the insects which I have 
named Tinee Bombyciformes; but the wings of the flower, which answer to the pectinated horns of 
the insects, appear rather too large. P. alopecuroides of our 371st plate possesses this extraordinary. 
he ciliz of its keel correspond éxactly to the fringes 
of the insects’ wings! A more perfect similitude etween objects in reality so remote and so different, I 
* 
