PRELIMINARY TREATISE. 
merit at least as natural (for indeed all arrangements 
must be artificial) and it is founded upon facts of easier 
access, the succession of classes being for the most part 
necessary, and laying no great tax on the memory. 
So vague are the given characters of the orders however 
amended, and upon so weak a foundation does botany stand 
at present, that although perhaps the only point that truly 
divides Asphodeleae from Amaryllidese of Brown is the 
flower of the latter growing above the germen and of the 
former under it, that feature is passed over as undetermined 
in Dr. Brown's definition of Asphodeleae, and he rests 
mainly the character of that order on the seed-shell being 
black crustaceous and brittle, and those of Ilemerocallideae 
and Amaryllideae on the seeds being neither black nor 
brittle, which distinctions appear to vanish upon further 
examination ; for I have at this moment before me 
seed of Albuca amongst the Asphodeleae with the shell 
softer and less fragile than any of the black-seeded Amaryl- 
lideae or at least equally so, and that of Hemerocallis, from 
which the second of these orders is named, with the shell 
black as jet, and perhaps as fragile as that of any seed that 
exists. In the next place on the assumption of the facts 
above stated, we find Dr. Brown subsequently constructing 
a new order of Hypoxidese ( App . to Flinders ), separated 
from Asphodeleae by the flower above the germen, and from 
Amaryllideae by the hardness of the seed-shell and the vague 
direction of the radicle. A black-shelled seed, almostequally 
hard, will be found in Pancratium Illyricum, and others of that 
order, and there seems to be rather a graduated difference of 
hardness than a diversity of structure. I have not made any 
microscopic observations on the interior of the minute seed of 
Hypoxis, and any feature of such difficult investigation seems 
to me unfit to characterise a natural order of plants, though 
very proper to be subjoined as a subsidiary observation. I 
apprehend that Dr. Brown must mean that the original 
posture of the radicle in the embryo is a little irregular, a 
point which does not appear to me of high importance, for 
I apprehend that in a hard-shelled seed it must ultimately 
issue at the natural passage which is the foramen. The 
ultimate direction of the radicle is vague in Crinum and 
Hymenocallis, and it pierces the fleshy mass with an irregular 
direction, and does not often issue at the natural passage. 
Its direction is also in those seeds often vague from the first. 
