MB. D. OLIVER ON AUHAUTIACEjE. 7 



symmetrical (5) occurs 4 or 3. The disk iii one race is as a thick- 

 ening of the base of the ovary with which it is entirely accrete ; in 

 another as a thickening, as it were, of the extremely short gyno- 

 phore, separated by a more or less marked constriction from the 

 ovary. 



In the case of the two plants here spoken of, I have united under 

 one species those forms which I felt myself unable intelligibly to 

 define separately for systematic purposes *. In this course I con- 

 ceive a second advantage to accrue in the comprehensiveness of 

 view which it is adapted to lead one to take in respect not only 

 "to the geographical relations, but, if I may so say, the history 

 of the species into which it affords perhaps some small measure of 

 insight. Partly in deference to the course followed by more ex- 

 perienced botanists, I have not thus combined a plant found at the 

 Cape — the only South Continental African member of the order — 

 with one of the western peninsula of India, with which it entirely 

 agrees, excepting that usually the foliage is smaller and the ovules 

 more nearly, indeed almost truly, collateral. I speak of Clausena 

 incequalis, Bth., and the Indian C. Willdenovii (including (J. nana). 

 On this latter account — the tendency to have the ovules collateral 

 — a special "genus" has been framed for the reception of the 

 Cape plant. 



I have united with 0. incequalis specimens from Cape Coast, 

 gathered by Vogel (the C. anisata of PL Nigrit.) ; a more paniculate 

 plant, of which I have seen several specimens in the Hookerian 

 and British Museum herbaria, prevails in West Africa, which I 

 think the true Amyris anisata, "Willd. It is possible Vogel's 

 plant may be a reduced state of this ; it however closely resembles 

 the Cape plant. 



Notwithstanding the number of specimens which I have had 

 through my hands, either dried, or in the fresh state from the 

 Boyal Gardens, I acknowledge that two or three of the genera 

 I leave in a very unsatisfactory condition. Nor do I see how, 

 under present circumstances, I caii safely do otherwise. Indeed, 

 until the species of the Eastern and Southern Indian Archipelago 

 and of North Australia have been more fully collected and collated, 



* It is Bometimes 'alleged, that to treat any forma technically as varieties or 

 as of subordinate rank to the species, is tantamount practically to totally dis- 

 regarding them ; and there may be, 1 admit, some truth in this ; yet why should 

 it be so? Many forms which have been raised to the rank of species much 

 to the encumberment of science, might well have been left disregarded, were 

 that the only alternative. 



