42 On the Affinities of Ceratophyllutece. 



The order Cerat&phyllacete, indicated, perhaps, by Richard, 

 was described, in the year 1821, by Samuel Frederick Gray, 

 in a work entitled, A Natural Arrangement of British Plants ;* 

 wherein it is correctly characterized, except that the radicle is 

 said to be superior, i. e. to point towards the summit of the peri- 

 carp. Were this the case, it would necessarily follow, inas- 

 much as the seed is suspended, that the radicle should be 

 turned towards the hilum, or, in other words, that the seed is 

 anutrojious; whereas, on the contrary, the ovule of Cerato- 

 phyllum is really orlhotropous, and the radicle inferior A This 

 erroneous view would scarcely require such especial notice, 

 since Gartner has correctly described the seed in these re- 

 spects.J were it not for the extraordinary fact of its inadvertent 

 adoption in the Prodomits of De Candolle, the Introduction to 

 the Natural System by Lindley, the OrJines Plantarum of 

 Bartling, the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,% (as 

 well as in the Prodromus Flora Peninsula Indue Orientalis) 

 by Arnott, and also in the second and greatly improved edition 

 of Dr. Lindley's Introduction to the Natural System, published 

 within the past year. The genus has also been recently revised 

 by Chamisso,|| and several new species indicated, but no notice 

 whatever is taken of the structure of the ovule and seed. 



It is not surprising that the true affinities of Geratophyllum 

 should have been overlooked, so long as its real structure was 

 misunderstood in such an important particular. The author 



* Vol. II. p. 554. 



f This important mistake can scarcely be attributed to inadvertence, 

 since in the Corrigenda at the end of the volume, the author adds, 

 " seed upright, pendulous," which, instead of being a correction, is an 

 additional error. 



t " Semen fundo putaminis aflixum . . . Embryo crectus. . . . Radi- 

 cula intra vitellum abscondita, in/era." — Gairtner, I. c. 



§ Article Botany, p. 108. 



II Linnaa, 4, p. 503. 



