21 6

AFFINITY OF BEGONIA.

the details of systematic arrangement, to overrulecharacters which are judged, by experience or analogy,to be more important. The able writers whose la-hours we have been contemplating, the chief syste-matic botanists who have adverted at all to the albu-men, have been well aware of this.

What has just been remarked, of the inconstancyof number in the seeds of particular plants, and ofit’s great diversity in species or genera nearly akin,may possibly diminish the apparent absurdity of con-sidering the great differences between the fruit of Be-gonia and Polygonum or Humes, and between that ofsome Campanulacece and the Composite.e, as a matterof but secondary importance, and may reconcile us-tothe opinion that such differences should give way, inboth cases, to strong points of agreement. Even thegreat distinction between the inferior germen of Be-gonia, and the superior one of the Order of Polygo-nece, Juss. 28, is invalidated by the above instance ofVaccinium ; and the coincidence of habit is so remark-able, that I cannot but confess myself very anxious toascertain a decisive affinity, or analogy, in the fructi-fication, lest the great fundamental principle of allsound botanical classification should, in any degree,be undermined,