DRS. HOOKER AND THOMSON ON EUPTELZA. 241 
district, the flora of which has very intimate relations to that of 
China and Japan. On the ticket attached to the specimens, 
Griffith refers them to Cupulifer ; but he had, no doubt, examined 
them in the most cursory manner, as we can find no reference to 
the plant in any of his published works. 
As the Mishmi specimens serve to complete the character of 
this very curious genus, and give better data for fixing its place in 
the system, we have thought it desirable to lay the accompanying 
drawing before the Society. Instead of describing Griffith's plant 
at length, it may be as well to give a brief abstract of the character 
of the flowering plant, and then to point out the additions which 
the new materials have enabled us to make. 
In the Japan plant, according to Siebold and Zuccarini, the 
flowers are destitute of perianth, the sexual organs being seated . 
on a shallow excavation at the end of the peduncle. They are 
polygamous, some consisting of carpels only, while others are 
hermaphrodite, or rather male with rudimentary female organs. 
The stamens and ovaries are numerous and indefinite, but equal 
in number. The anthers are adnate at the end of a short erect 
filament, 2-celled and laterally dehiscent, with a terminal apiculate 
connective. The ovaries are stalked, compressed, obovate, with 
no style, but a linear stigma lining the inner margin from the 
apex down to the point of insertion of the single pendulous ovule. 
The Griffithian specimens have a very few old leaves only, in 
shape like those figured in the ‘ Flora Japonica,’ and consist of 
slender twigs, with short lateral branchlets profusely covered with 
short pedicels, each supporting at its extremity a single flower, 
consisting of a fascicle of from 10 to 20 membranous samare. 
The apex of the pedicel is quite flat, and not excavated as in the 
flowering state of the Japan plant. The samare taper downwards 
into a stalk their own length, and are thin and membranous in 
texture, scarcely swelling out at the seeds, obovate in shape, with 
a deep notch about the middle on the ventral suture, marking the 
attachment of the seeds and the lower end of the narrow linear 
stigmatic surface, which extends upwards along the edge to the 
broad apex of the samara. The seeds are 2-4 in number, with a 
hard, black, brittle testa, granular but not oily albumen, and a small 
embryo not more than one-sixth the length of the albumen. They 
are quite anatropous, and are closely packed together, nearly fill- 
ing the cavity of the samara, the greater part of which is a mere 
wing not separable into two laminæ. 
The structure of this remarkable plant is so simple, and at the 
same time points in so many directions, that it is not easy to de- 
LINN. PROC.—BOTANY, VOL, VII. x 
