INDIAN SPECIES OF UTRICULARIA. 178 
important specific characters upon them. I have examined the 
seeds of many species, and believe that marked characters, avail- 
able in their discrimination, are, in some instances, afforded by 
them. The variety in their form and surface is striking; but we 
are yet very deficient in information as to whether parallel differ- 
ences are presented in the internal structure of the seed, which it 
is extremely difficult to investigate in many instances—in part 
from the excessively oleaginous nature of the cell-contents, and 
perhaps, too, the relatively small or imperceptible cotyledons. Of 
the older descriptions of Indian Utricularia, the most important 
are those of Linnegus and Vahl. From the accumulation of. 
species subsequent to their period, the extreme brevity of their 
notices, and the imperfection of the absolute material upon which 
they were framed, it is very difficult, and frequently indeed im- 
possible, to arrive at a confident determination of their species. 
When authentic specimens have been accessible to me (as in the 
case of the Linnean Herbarium) corresponding sufficiently nearly 
with the published descriptions of the author, I have adopted the 
Herbarium names; in the case, however, of a few of Dr. Kenig’s 
plants in the collection of the British Museum, which appear to 
be unusual or aberrant forms of frequent species, or else very im- 
perfect and insufficient for positive determination, I have not 
thought it desirable to disturb nomenclature unduly by the adop- 
tion of the Vahlian names which, with reason, may be supposed 
to apply to them. Examples of a Utricularia, however, in that 
herbarium, from Dr. Konig, bearing the name U. flexuosa Vahl, 
together with the description of that species in the ‘ Enumeratio 
Plantarum,’ compel me to give it its fair precedence, at the sacri- 
fice of Dr: Roxburgh’s generally adopted name, U. fasciculata. 
In the distribution of the Indian species in this paper, for the 
purpose of ready reference, I have availed myself of sectional 
characters, based upon, chiefly, the presence or absence of a leafy 
axis, whether submerged or terrestrial; the attachment of the 
squame* and bracts; the length of the pedicels; the direction and 
* T employ the word ‘squame, with previous writers, to denote the minute 
empty scales attached, like the bracts, sometimes by the base, sometimes about 
or below the middle, to the scape. Although the transition to these from the 
true leaves at the base of the scape, or, when present, from the capillary seg- 
ments of the submerged axis, may be very abrupt, I take them to be reduced 
foliar organs, referable probably to the ‘ hypsophyllary’ series, and correspond- 
ing to similar appendages in Pyrola, &c. : ' 
At the base of the pedicel, in nearly all of the Indian species destitute of a 
floating axis, are found, by and within the bract (as noted in the sectional cha- 
