Certain plants, belonging to the Malpighiaceae, bear perfect and degraded flowers; in the latter, as A.

de Jussieu has remarked, "The greater number of the characters proper to the species, to the genus, to the family, to the class, disappear, and thus laugh at our classification.

" When Aspicarpa produced in France, during several years, only these degraded flowers, departing so wonderfully in a number of the most important points of structure from the proper type of the order, yet M.