the description given by Lamarck, except that the whole plant is perfectly glabrous; it also is four-seeded, and the flowers vary from one to three. These species pass into other forms of the genus: the P. monanthos, by P. arborescens, into the ovate and compressed spike of P. Psyllium and its allies; and the P. nubigena through P. tumida, Link, into the ordinary forms with cylindrical elongated spikes.
Plantago is perhaps as universally distributed a genus as any of dicotyledonous plants. In Arctic America Dr. Richardson has gathered the P. major, L., in lat. 68° N., and I have seen the P. monanthos, D'Urv., in the immediate neighbourhood of Cape Horn, in the 57th degree of south latitude: other species not only run along the whole chain of the Andes, from Fuegia through Chili, Peru and Colombia, from whence they are continued along the Rocky mountains, but they also frequent the vast plains on both sides of these great barriers. Under the equator in South America they attain an altitude of 13,000 feet, whence Prof. Jameson has sent to us a species, gathered on Pichincha in Colombia. In the continent of Europe they are no less universally distributed, P. major, which Mr. Humboldt brought from a height of 6000 feet on the Andes of Peru, occurring in Lapland as far north as 67°, whilst in the same country the P. maritima reaches the 72nd degree. In Asia their principal parallel is in Persia, Cashmere and Affghanistan, where Mr. Griffiths has collected numerous species, and from whence they spread over the great Siberian plains to Kamtschatka and the borders of the Chinese empire. A few species are natives of Upper India, Nepaul, and the Himalayah mountains. Only one occurs in the Peninsula of India, the P. Uspaghool, Roxb.; this is cultivated in the colder season, and Dr. Royle considers it as probably a native of Persia. Hitherto they are unknown in the Malay peninsula and islands, being natives of open and not wooded localities. For this reason they are not found, as far as we know, in central Africa, though several species are natives of the Cape of Good Hope, and are frequent along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. The various Atlantic islands, as well as the Mauritius and Ceylon in the Indian Ocean, and those of the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, have all representatives of the genus.
I have retained Mr. Brown's name for this species, the P. carnosa of Lamarck being probably a variety of P. maritima, L.
Plate XLIII. Fig. 1, flower and bract; fig. 2, corolla cut open; fig. 3, stamen; fig. 4, ovarium; fig. 5, capsule with persistent calyx and bract; fig. 6, the same removed; fig. 7, the same with the upper valve fallen away; fig. 8, side view of dissepiments and seeds; fig. 9, front view of the same; fig. 10, seed showing the hilum; fig. 11, side view of the same; fig. 12, seed cut open parallel to, and fig. 13, at right angles to the axis:—all magnified.
XXIV. POLYGONEÆ, Juss.
1. Rumex cuneifolius, Campd., Mon. des Rum. p. 95. Cham, et Schlecht. in Linnæa, vol. iii. p. 58. Roem. et Schult. vol. vii. p. 1416.
Var. alismæfolios, Hook. fil.; foliis ovato- v. lineari-oblongis rarius basi attenuatis:—an species distincta?
Hab. Lord Auckland's group; on the sandy and pebbly beach near the N.W. point of the large island, rare.
Of this plant I have seen neither flower nor fruit, having met with it in a very young state only. In habit, size, and general appearance it very closely resembles the R. cuneifolius. It has the large membranous stipules of that plant, which are fimbriated only in age; the branching and size of the two are also the same; but in the Auckland Island specimens the leaves are not decidedly cuneate at the base, often indeed quite the contrary. Of the true plant we have many specimens from both sides of America, from the southward of the province of St. Paul on the east coast, and Valdivia on the west, to the Straits of Magalhaens. They vary but slightly in the form and length of the leaf, some being attenuated, others cordate at the base; always, in the American specimens, broadest above the middle, and crisped rather than undulated at the margin.
