101 
natural Family of Plants called Composita. 
at variance with the foregoing observations, that although in an 
assemblage of flowers priority of expansion generally indicates a 
greater degree of perfection, and consequently a more ready con¬ 
vertibility of the hermaphrodite into the female flower; yet in a 
hermaphrodite flower the development of stamina usually pre¬ 
cedes that of pistilla. The most remarkable exceptions to this 
order of development which I at present remember, occur in 
several species of Plantago , where the stigmata are fully deve¬ 
loped, and often even withered, before the bursting of the anthers. 
I now proceed to make some remarks on certain genera of 
Composite which either occur under different names in late syste¬ 
matic works, or whose structure and limits seem to be imper¬ 
fectly understood. 
Soli v a 
was established in the Prodromus Floras Peruvian® et Chilensis, 
and is adopted by Persoon in his Synopsis Plantarum. 
To this genus Hippia minuta of the Linnean Herbarium un¬ 
questionably belongs, and it is perhaps not specihcally distinct 
from Soliva pedicellata. But on comparing the structure of this 
plant with the figures and descriptions, given by Mons. de Jus¬ 
sieu (in the fourth volume of the Annales du Museum,) of the dif¬ 
ferent species of his Gymnostyles, it appears to me evident that the 
whole of this genus is referable to Soliva , whose principal charac¬ 
ters would consist in the want of corolla or perhaps its accretion 
with the persistent style in the female florets; in the pericarpia 
being more or less winged, and presenting their disk instead of 
their margins to the centre of the capitulum. 
Sir 
