81 
natural Family of Plants called Composite. 
lished an ingenious work on the natural families of plants*, takes 
no notice of the vessels of the corolla in the character of Compo¬ 
site which he has there proposed. 
In the figures of syngenesious plants given by Schkuhr-f, when¬ 
ever the ligulce of Cichoracece are magnified, the trunks of the nerves 
are correctly represented ending in the sinuses; unless in one 
plate containing Lactuca virosa and Sonchus sibericus , in both of 
which the vessels are made to pass through the axes of the teeth ; 
but in no case are the marginal branches noticed. It is singular 
that this generally accurate author, in the many magnified figures 
he has given of tubular florets, has only in two cases represented 
the trunks of their vessels, namely in Echinops Ritro, where they 
are correctly placed, and in Silphium trifoliatum , where, though 
only five vessels are visible, they arc erroneously made to pass 
through the axes of the lacinise. 
The only remaining author that notices these vessels is M. Mir- 
bel, who in the second part of his valuable Elemens de Physio¬ 
logic Yegetale et de Botanique, published in 1815, introduces 
into his character of Composite the fact of the lacinise of the co¬ 
rolla being furnished with marginal nerves. This observation, if 
not original, the author may have adopted either from my essay 
already quoted, of which he was in possession soon after its pub¬ 
lication, or from M. Cassini’s third memoir, which was read to the 
Institute of France six months after that essay appeared : but he 
could not have derived it from the passage in that author’s second 
memoir, on which he rests his claim ; no notice being there taken 
of the disposition of vessels in the laciniae. 
In M. Cassini’s memoir expressly on the Corolla of Composite, 
which was read to the Institute of France in December 1814, and 
of which an abstract, by the author himself, is given in a late 
* Tabul® affinitatum regni vcgetabilis. f In Botanisches Handbuch. 
m number 
VOL. XII. 
