Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/135

natural Family of Plants called Compositae. 107 of its pappus being plumose through their whole length, as in Craspedia, from which it is distinguished by the want of paleae on the partial receptacles, and very remarkably in habit.

I have selected the foregoing genera as having been either published under different names, or, as it appears to me, unnecessarily subdivided. In this extensive class it would not be difficult to point out a much greater number consisting of species improperly united. One very remarkable case of this kind is the genus

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 Linneus in the sixth edition of his Genera Plantarum, where the natural character is given: but the following essential character, which is still retained, appears for the first time in the twelfth edition of Systema Naturae, in the third section of Polygamia aequalis: "Receptacidum paleaceum, Pappus pilosus, Calyx imbricatus." The species originally referred to Calea, in the second edition of Species Plantarum, are C.jamaicensis, oppositifolia, 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 Linneus 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†, though in reality one only, being without pappus, and in other respects corresponding with the generic character of Santolina; and the third, which

p 2 Browne
 * In Amoenit. Acad. vol. v. p. 404. † Loc. cit.