32 MR. BENTHAM'8 NOTES ON HOMALIUM. 
they.do each other, and as the whole series have a remarkable 
conformity in the general structure of their flower as well as in 
foliage and in habit, it appears more appropriate to consider them 
all as one genus, which can be artificially divided into two sections 
on the old character. 
There is one point, however, in whieh the American species 
appear slightly to differ from the Asiatic and African ones: the 
fruit, at least in H. densiflorum and H. pedicellatum, becomes very 
hard, and in our specimens shows no disposition to open in valves, 
-whilst it does so most readily in some of the Asiatic ones, splitting 
the styles so as to cause them to have been occasionally described 
as double their real number. But I have not seen the fruit quite 
ripe in any species : the ovary, shortly after flowering, appears to 
harden in the Asiatie H. grandiflorum as in the above-mentioned 
American ones; and in the original American H. racemosum and 
Н. Racoubea, the fruit is said to open in short valves at the top, 
although I see no tendency to it in our specimens. This cha- 
racter cannot therefore be made available for generic distinction, 
being accompanied by no corresponding differences: in habit or in 
other organs. 
Among old, genera not really differing from Homalium, Racoubea 
(Aubl.) has long been united with it, and Astranthus (Lour.) with 
Blackwellia ; Miquel has also correctly joined with it the Condy- 
locarpus lately established by Blume. On the other hand, Na- 
pimoga (Aubl.), which does not appear to have been examined since 
his time, can scarcely be a congener, not having the characteristic 
glands: the analyses given, rude as they are, are not to be de- 
pended on for correctness, and afford no evidence of the plant 
belonging even to the same natural order. 
In the distinction of the species, besides the artificial sectional 
character above mentioned, the inflorescence, either a close panicle 
with short divaricate branches, or long racemes, either solitary or 
few, forming a long loose panicle, as indicated by De Candolle, 
divides well the Blackwellias into two groups ; and the species are 
mostly well characterized by the relative size and shape of the 
calycine segments and petals taken especially when slightly en- 
larged after the flowering is over. In some of the section Black- 
wellia they are all nearly of a size, linear or oblong, slightly nar- 
rowed at the base, ciliate at the edges, so as to give the young 
fruit precisely the shape of elegant little shuttlecocks; in H. 
senarium, H. pedicellatum, and others, they are all broader at the 
base, spreading or reflexed and radiate round the base of the 
