tropical plants of America by the names of acutifolia and 
obtusifolia. In the first the leaves are less numerously pin- 
nated than in the species before us; and the leaflets nar- 
rower and lanceolate; in the latter the corolla is smooth 
(without any kind of pubescence), and the leaves entirely 
pointless. 
In the natural order to which this genus belongs the 
anthers are generally strictly bilocular, consisting of two 
oblong cells parted perpendicularly through the axis of 
their receptacle from top to bottom into two linear lobes 
which diverge divaricately down to their base, where they 
remain equally fixed to the point of their filament. In the 
species before us, the lowermost of these lobes is abortive, 
its place being faintly demonstrated by an imperfect 
rudiment. Judging by the figures, the same deficiency 
seems to prevail in the species recorded by Messrs. Hum- 
boldt and Bonpland, though unnoticed in the accompany- 
ing description by those celebrated naturalists, who speak, 
on the contrary, of the anthers as bilocular. We can 
scarcely doubt that this circumstance will prove an avail- 
able distinction in the definition of the genus, though we 
have not taken upon ourselves to add it to the character 
proposed by M. de Jussieu, who has not noticed it. 
The technical difference relied upon to discriminate 
Bicnonia from Jacaranpa, exclusive of habit, is taken from 
the fruit, which in the first has a partition parallel with 
the valves, in the second one placed in the contrary direc- 
tion to them. 
Such samples of the species as are seen in our hot- 
houses have not exceeded six or seven feet in height, with 
a slender stem and a light ash-coloured bark. The foliage 
bears considerable resemblance to that of Mimosa and 
Acacia; it is finely furred and powdered, as well as the 
branches, with variously sized grains of a transparent crys- 
tallized secretion, some as fine as dust, others as big as a 
large pin's head. 
A coloured fragment of tbe leaf has been magnified 
in our plate, to show more distinctly the mode in which 
the decurrent leaflets are connected with their petiole. The 
uncoloured outline of an entire leaf, in the same plate, is 
one of the smaller ones of the plant of its natural size. 
Don MSS. 
12 
