464 TRANS. OF THE ACAD. OF SCIENCE. 
and Decaisne of Paris I have now had the opportunity of 
examining and comparing fragments of Lamarck’s original 
J. pallescens and Michaux’s J. acuminatus. The former’s 
name refers, as Prof. Roeper informs me, to two poor ( more 
suo ) specimens collected by Comtnerson near Buenos-Ayres; 
the heads are apparently 5-flowered; the flowers, not yet 
open, are similar to those of our plant, but $re 6-androus and 
pedicelled. Lamarck gives North as well as South America 
as the habitat of his plant, but adds that his specimens are 
those above noticed; his reference to North America is evi¬ 
dently based on quotations from Pluk. Aim. t. 92, f. 9, and 
Moris. Hist. 8, sect. 8, t. 9. f. 5, which both represent rather 
something like J, tenuis. Meyer was undoubtedly misled by 
these references to North American localities to substitute 
Lamarck’s to Michaui’s name. La Harpe, p. 136, suggests, 
probably with more justice, tlfat Commerson’s plant is an im¬ 
mature J. Dombeyanus. Michaux’s specimen, collected in 
South Carolina, is a rather small-flowered form of var. legiti- 
mus , such as often occur south-eastward (comp. Hb. norm. 
58), with only 5 flowers in a head (Michaux says 3 flowers), 
the (unripe) capsule being about as long as the sepals. The 
other synonyms of the older authors have not given any 
less trouble, principally because both Meyer and Kunth have 
described their J. paradoxus and J. fraternus with outer 
sepals exceeding the inner ones (a very rare case in any form 
of J. acuminatus) ; and in the former the capsule was said 
to be longer, in the latter shorter, than the sepals; neither 
mentions the seeds. Having been able to examine a frag¬ 
ment of Kunth’s plant, which had been sent from Boston by 
Boott, and is preserved in the Royal Herbarium at Berlin, I 
can most positively assert that it is a scanty-flowered form of 
what I have called var. legitimus , with the outer sepals very 
slightly exceeding the inner 'ones, and with a not fully ripe 
capsule about the length of the inner sepals. Meyer’s J. 
paradoxus is more difficult to identify, because the original 
specimen does not exist in his herbarium ; he had examined 
it, as a memorandum indicates, in Hb. Lehmann, to whom it 
was given by Willdenow under the name of J. polycephalus, 
and preserved only a drawing of it and a rough sketch of 
some details. There are, however, in the.sheet superscribed 
by Meyer “J. paradoxus ,” ten dried specimens from different 
parts of the United States and Mexico, perhaps rather uncrit¬ 
ically thrown together; flowers of only one of them have been 
sent to me, and they belong to the ordinary form of var. le- 
gitimus . The figure of the original type represents a plant 
with a decompound panicle about 4 inches high and as wide, 
with numerous few-flowered heads, and leafy excrescences 
from some of them; the other sketch shows an acute capsule 
exceeding the lanceolate-subulate sepals of equal length, and 
