A. Gray—Histivation and it® Terminology. 343 
giving two names to different degrees of the same thing. 
It being conceded, I presume, that the mode II should be 
specifically distinguished, what name, on the whole, ought it 
to bear? If ollow prevalent usage, contorta will be the 
term. But this term was unknown in this sense to the founders 
name is the least appropriate. Convoluta is as go ame 
as can be, and its use in the present sense is not unconformable 
with the Linnean use in vernation. carried out, 
mencelature, 
the proper 
tion, and taken up, as it was very early, by Mirbel for sestivation. 
The only objections to it are, first, that it has never come into 
systematic use, and second, that ob in the composition of botan- 
leal terms, commonly stands for obversely or inversely. | 
obvoluta is not burdened with this signification: it is classical 
for “wrapped round,” as is convoluta for rolled together. I 
conclude that one or the other of these two terms ought to be 
used, 
Finally, although there is little, if any, practical misuse, 
there is some mis-definition, of the term imbricate as applied, to 
estivation. Adrien de Jussieu defines it well (in Cours Elé- 
mentaire, 308) in the phrase “La préfloraison spirale est aussi 
hommé imbriquée ;” and in noting that when the number stops 
at five, the pieces fall into two exterior, two interior, and one 
led estivatio quincuncialis.t This is clear and to the point. 
But other authors have had a fancy for distinguishing between 
* I note with satisfaction that Bentham and Hooker use these terms to signify 
from left to right, or from right to left, of a person, supposed to stand outside 
of the closed bud, which is surely the natural position of the | 
on 1 the name gui jal answers the purpose after definition, and has long been 
im use; but this arrangement in diagram is wholly unlike the with its 
‘our pieces or stars in the periphery, or at the angles of a square, and one in the 
