CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
On the Calycerace^. 
The small order of the Calyceracea is little known : it is, how- 
ever, of great interest to the systematic botanist, because it con- 
stitutes the connecting link between the extensive family of the 
Composites and the contiguous orders of the Dipsacecs and 
Valerianacees. It exhibits also many points of structure which 
are exceedingly curious. 
It was first instituted as a distinct family by Mr. Kobert 
Brown, under the title of the Calycerece, in a memoir read before 
the Linnsean Society in Feb. 1816 , when, with his extraordinary 
acumen, that most distinguished of botanists was able to deter- 
mine, from very incomplete specimens, its principal and most 
essential characters. Nearly about the same time, Cassini, while 
engaged in numerous investigations in the family of the Compo- 
sites, noticed, in the genera Calycera and Boopis, a considerable 
difference of structure; he therefore separated them into a 
small order, for which he proposed the name of Boopidcs. This 
memoir was read before the French Academy in August of the 
same year. 
From the admirable remarks of Mr. Brown on this subject *, 
and the subsequent very complete analysis by M. Richard, in 
1820 t, of the whole family, which then consisted of only five 
species, representing three genera, we possess nearly all the 
information hitherto published respecting the structure of the 
* Linn. Trans, xii. p. 135. t Mem. Mus. vi. p. 75. 
VOL. II. 
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