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natural Family of Plants called Composita. 
upper part of the spike; and this relation also exists in the more 
compound inflorescence of Ricinus , Syphonia, and Celtis, in which 
the order of expansion is equally inverted. 
It may seem rather paradoxical to select Euphorbia as an ex¬ 
ample of the same relation ; this genus being considered by Lin- 
neus, and the greater part of the botanists who have adopted his 
system, as having a dodecandrous hermaphrodite flower. We 
have already, however, I believe, sufficient evidence that this sup¬ 
posed hermaphrodite flower is in reality formed of several mo- 
nandrous male flowers surrounding a single female*. 
In conformity with this view of its composition, and with the 
relation above attempted to be established, the development of 
the pistillum precedes that of the stamina in many species of the 
genus. 
It is more difficult to determine whether this order of expansion 
and relative position of sexes in Euphorbia be in conformity with 
the general rule, or an exception to it. For its faciculus of flowers 
may be considered as analogous either to the simple spike, and 
consequently having an inverted order of expansion, as in Allium 
descetidens, and certain species of Grevillea and Anadenia : or it 
may be assimilated to the compound spike, as in several species 
of the genus the male flowers appear to be separated into fasciculi; 
* To the arguments I have adduced (in my Remarks on the Botany of New Holland) 
in support of this opinion, I am now enabled to add the more direct proof derived from 
certain species of Euphorbia itself, in which the female flower is furnished with a mauifest 
calyx. I have formerly observed, that in a few cases the footstalk of the ovarium is dilated 
and obscurely lobed at top: but in the species now referred to it terminates in three di¬ 
stinct and equal lobes of considerable length, and which being regularly opposite to the cells 
of the capsule may be compared to the three outer foliola of the perianthium of Phyllanthus, 
between which and the cells of the capsule the same relation exists. This calyx is most 
remarkable in an undeseribed species of Euphorbia from the coast of Patagonia, in the 
Herbarium of Sir Joseph Banks; but it is observable, though less distinct, in E. puntcea 
and several other species. 
o 2 
and 
