EUPHORBIACEÆ.[1] This is an extensive and very general family, of which about 100 species have already been observed in Terra Australis. Of these the greater part exist within the tropic, but the order extends to the southern extremity of Van Diemen's Island, and the greater number of the genera peculiar to this country are found in the principal parallel or higher latitudes.
556] The species of Euphorbia are not numerous in Terra Australis, most of them are intratropical plants, and all of them are referable to one section of the genus. It appears to me that the name of the order ought not to be taken from this genus, which is so little calculated to afford a correct idea of its structure that authors are still at variance in the names and functions they assign to several parts of the flower. The view I take of the structure of Euphorbia is, in one important particular at least, different from those given by Lamarck,[2] Ventenat,[3] Richard[4] and Decandolle[5] though possibly the same that Jussieu has hinted at;[6] so briefly, however, and I may add obscurely, that if his supposition be really analogous to what I shall presently offer, he has not been so understood by those who profess to follow him in this respect.
With all the authors above quoted, I regard what Linneus has called calyx and corolla in Euphorbia as an involucrum, containing several male flowers which surround a single female. By some of these authors the male flowers are described as monandrous, and in this respect, also, I agree with them; but the body, which all of them describe as a jointed filament, I consider to be made up of two very distinct parts, the portion below the joint being the footstalk of the flower, and that above it the proper filament; but as the articulation itself is entirely naked, it follows that there is no perianthium; the filiform or laciniated scales which authors have considered as such, being on this supposition analogous to bracteæ. The female flower, in conformity with this supposition, has also its pedunculus on
