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MR. BEI^THAM ON LOGANIACE^. 113 



Edouard Bureau, entitled " De la Famille des Loganlacees et dcs 

 plantes qu'ellc fournit a la medecine, These pour le Doctorat en 

 medecine/' Paris, 185G, 4to, 150 pp. The medical properties of 

 the drugs derived from the family are treated at great length, but 

 there is also considerable space devoted to the systematic questions 

 which are the subject of my own paper. M. Bureau has not had 

 the same advantages as myself in the examination of so large a 

 proportion of specimens, nor does he appear to have had the 

 opportunity of consulting some of the more modem works except- 

 ing through "Walpers's extracts, such, for instance, as Blume's 

 " Museum Botanicum Lugdimo-Batavum," but he has availed him- , 

 self to the utmost of the materials he has had access to, and his 

 analysis and descriptions are very careful and exact. He inclines 

 to reject a considerable number of genera, referring them to their 

 nearest allied families ; that is, Mitreoh, Mitrasacme^ and Poly- 

 premum to Buhiacece ; Oelsemiimt to Apocynece ; Fagrcea^ Potalia, 

 ^d Anthocleista to Oentianece ; Nuxia and its allies to ScropJiu- 

 ^(innccv. For the reasons above given, I cannot concur in this 

 course, unless indeed the whole order be broken up, and the two 

 genera which M. Bureau considers as essentially typical, Logania 

 and Qeniostoma, be also rejected, the one to Scrophularine^, the 

 other to Apocynece. 



M. Bureau's careful observations of the details of structure of 

 such genera as he had specimens of to dissect, suggest a few addi- 

 tional notes which I shall place in the order above adopted, 



MiTKEOLA, MiTEASACME, and POLTPEEMUM. 



In dissecting the flowers at a very early stage, M. Bureau finds 

 a very perceptible adherence of the ovary to the tube of the calyx, 

 amounting in Polypremum to a fifth or nearly a fourth of the total 

 height of the yoimg ovary, and in Mitreola to nearly one-half in a 

 ^ery young state, although gradually disappearing as the ovary 

 ff^ows, and imperceptible when the capsule is ripe. Tliis adherence, 

 ^liich some might be disposed to consider as the broad base of 

 the ovary, always large in proportion to its height at an early 

 ^*age, is, without doubt, indicative of a close affinity to BuUacc<v, 

 an affinity which must suggest itself to any one who studies the 

 ^ganiacecB ; but appears to me insufl^icient to establish identity^ 

 ^ it ia no more than what is observable in numerous Scrophda^ 

 nn€(B~^\^ none more so tlian in Calceolaria, which can yet hardly 

 ^ excluded from true Bcrophularinede . 



^ Geniostoma. 



*!• Bureau points out the curious expansions of tlie placenta in 



^^N. PBGC— BOTANY. I 





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