OF PLANTS CALLED COMPOSITE. 261
base, is necessarily connected with this structure, which seems also peculiarly well adapted to the dense inflo- rescence of Compositse ; the vessels of the corolla and stamina being united and so disposed as to be least liable to suffer by pressure."
At the date of this publication I certainly had no know- ledge of any similar observations having been previously made : but I now see in M. Cuvier's account of the pro- ceedings of the Institute of France for 1815, that M. Cassini is considered to have anticipated me on this subject, and as he says in " termes non equivoques." What these terms are, appears by a letter I have received from M. Cassini himself, in which he states his claim to rest on the following passage :
" Chaque fleur hermaphrodite ou male contient cinq etamines, correspondent aux cinq nervures de la Corolle et par consequent alternes avec ses lobes."
This passage occurs in a Memoir on the Stamina of Compositae, which was read to the Institute of France in July 1813, and first appeared with the substance of that Memoir in the Journal de Physique, said to be for April 1814; but the actual date of the publication of which I have reason to believe was somewhat later, and very nearly corresponding with that at which M. de Jussieu was in possession of a copy of my essay containing the observations already quoted. I conclude it is not supposed I could have been acquainted with the passage in the original memoir, unless the report usually made on memoirs read to the Institute should have been printed, and should have actually noticed this passage, or the discovery it is now said to contain.
But independently of the near equality of dates, I cannot consider my observations as either wholly or even in any C79 considerable degree anticipated by the passage in ques- tion. My observations notice not only the disposition of the five vessels in the tube of the corolla, but their rami- fication in the lacinise, by no means a necessary conse- quence of that disposition ; they notice also the existence, in several genera of Composite, of five vessels alternating
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