Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/108

80 Since my attention has been again turned to the subject, I have endeavoured to collect all that has been observed on the nerves or vessels of the corolla of Compositæ. a brief account of which may be not altogether without interest.

The earliest notice I have been able to find is contained in a passage (in page 170) of Grew's Anatomy of Plants, where, in speaking of syngenesious flosculi, he says, "they are frequently ridged, or as it were hem'd like the edge of a band." And his figure of a magnified floret of the common Marigold, in tab. 61, gives a tolerable idea of the marginal vessels of its laciniæ. Grew however takes no notice of the trunks from which these branches arise, either in his text or plates.

Van Berkhey, in his Dissertation on Compositæ, published at Leyden in 1760, though he makes no mention of the nerves of the corolla in his text, yet in all the magnified figures he has given both of ligulate and tubular florets, correctly represents the trunks of the primary vessels, without however noticing their ramification in the laciniæ. I am anticipated therefore by this author's figures exactly in the same degree as by the passage contained in M. Cassini's second memoir.

The accurate Schmidel, in the few Compositæ which occur in his Icones, has correctly represented the trunks of the primary vessels, but has equally omitted their ramifications.

In the Analysis Florum of Batsch, a work published in 1790, the object of which was to give an idea of the structure of the natural families of plants, by a minute description and magnified figures of one or more species selected from each. Coreopsis tripteris occurs; and although the vessels of its tubular floret are very indistinctly figured, yet both their trunks and branches are correctly described. The same author however, who in 1802 lished