This page needs to be proofread.

OF PLANTS CALLED COMPOSITE. 287

would not be difficult to point out a much greater number consisting of species improperly united. One very remark- able case of this kind is the genus

Calea,

to which, as I intend to enter fully into the history and affinities of its species, I shall confine myself.

This genus was established by Linnaeus in the sixth edition of his Genera Plantarum, where the natural cha- racter is given : but the following essential character, which is still retained, appears for the first time in the twelfth edition of Sy sterna Naturae, in the third section of Polygamia aequalis :

" Beceptaculum paleaceum, Pappus pilosus, Calyx im- bricatus."

The species originally referred to Calea, in the second edition of Species Plantarum, are C. jamaicensis, opposi- tifolia, and Amellus, described from specimens in Browne's Jamaica Herbarium, which he had received a few years before, and incorporated with his own.

These three plants Linnaeus had originally referred to Santolina} for which it seems to me rather less difficult to account than for his afterwards uniting them together to form his genus Calea; two of them, according to his descriptions, 2 though in reality one only, being without pappus, and in other respects corresponding with the generic character of Santolina; and the third, which Browne had [ios doubtfully referred to the same genus, though furnished with pappus, agreeing with the others in having opposite leaves.

But the difference in habit between all these plants and the original species of Santolina is so great, that it pro- bably afterwards determined Linnaeus to remove them from that genus ; and although he found a sufficient generic character in the pappus of Calea jamaicensis only, he united with it the two other species, for a reason perhaps similar

1 In Amoenit. Acad. vol. v, p. 404. - Lor. cit.

�� �