PAINTER'S BALANCE

PAINTER'S BALANCE. See PAINTING, n° 18.
PALMÆ, PALMS. Under this name Linnæus has

arranged several genera, which, although capable of a place in separate classes of his system, he has chosen rather,

rather, on account of their singular structure, to place apart, in an appendix to the work.—See ARECA, CHAMEROPS, PHOENIX, COCOS, &c. (Encycl.); and CORYPHA, in this APPENDIX.

The same plants constitute one of the seven families or tribes into which all vegetables are distributed by Linnæus in his Philosophia Botanica. They are defined to be plants with simple stems, which at their summit bear leaves resembling those of the ferns, being a composition of a leaf and a branch; and whose flowers and fruit are produced on that particular receptacle or seat called a spadix, protruded from a common calix in form of a sheath or scabbard, termed by Linnæus spatha.

Palme is likewise the name of the first order in Linnæus's Fragments of a Natural Method. See BOTANY, p. 1304.