NAMES AND OBSERVATIONS ON INDIAN PLANTS. 545
M. Decandolle's opinion, as well as to the Abyssinian genus, which I had published: — " Non Desmochaetae sed Saltiae species, vid. Catal. PI. Abyssin. in Itin. D. Salt. Cometis nomen restituendum." — R. B.
M. Guillemin, in the Dictionnaire Classique d' Histoire Naturelle, torn. 4, p. 356, states that M. De Jussieu, who examined, or at least saw, the specimen in M. Delessert's Herbarium, recognised it to belong to Amaranthacea, and that M. Decandolle regarded it as a species of Desmochceta. M. Guillemin himself, in adopting M. Decandolle's opinion proposes to apply to that genus the older name Cometes ; and he adds that in a manuscript note in Burinannus's specimen I have proposed to do the same thing. But from that note, which I have already given verbatim, it appears that my proposing to restore the name Cometes referred to Saltia, and not to Desmochata, to which it was evident to me Cometes did not belong.
In the Linnean Herbarium the specimen named Cometes, I believe in the writing of the younger Linnaeus, proves to be a plant belonging to Convohulacece, and it is probably a species of Convolvulus or Ipomcea.
Burm annus (in Mora Indica) has given the specific name of Surattensis to his Cometes, and that name Linnaeus has adopted in his first Mantissa. In the twelfth edition of the Systema Naturae (vol. ii, p. 127), published in the same year, but subsequently to the Mantissa, he changed the specific name to alternijlora, no doubt derived from the account of the inflorescence given both by Burmannus and himself. It is, however, not a very apt name for a plant whose flowers are always in threes, though the common peduncles are generally alternate. I have therefore recurred to the original name.
Sir James Smith, in a (pencil) note on the specimen in the Linnean Herbarium, though aware that the specimen is not really Cometes, supposes the specific name last given by Linnaeus to have been suggested by it. This might have been the fact had that name been alternifolia, which, when he wrote the note, I have no doubt he believed it to be ; but the actual name alternijlora could not well be
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