212 MR. G. BENTHAM ON EUPHORBIACE^E. 



lary racemes, and in two or three American species they are in 

 loose slender-branched sessile cymes. The P. Jluitans, discovered 

 in the Amazon and so named by Spruce, is a little floating plant 

 with the aspect of a Salvinia ; but all these abnormal forms are so 

 closely allied to true species of PhyUantlius as not to give them 

 even sectional importance. 



Of the remaining genera of this group, Leptonema is a single 

 Madagascar species which I have not seen. From the descrip- 

 tions and from Jussieu's figure it must be very near Phyllanthus, 

 but with the male flow r ers in pedunculate umbels, and the anthers 

 of Antidesma. It is probably on that account that Baillon 

 reduces it to Antidesma itself, with which the other characters 

 given do not at all agree. Securinega, from which we exclude 

 Fluggea, differs from the sections Euphyllanthus and Cicca of 

 Phyllanthus solely in the development of a rudimentary pistil in 

 the male flowers, a purely technical character rarely accompanied 

 by any difference in habit. There are only eight or nine species, 

 but as widely scattered as those of PTiyllantlius, as they include 

 the Spanish Cohneiroa, the North-east Asiatic Geblera, the South- 

 African Pleiostemon, the South-American S. congesta, S. elliptica, 

 and S. Schuechiana, and the Cuban Acidothamnus, besides the 

 Madagascar Gelfuga and the Arabian Meineckia, which I have 

 not seen. The latter plant is said by Baillon to have minute 

 petals, which Mueller denies. Neoroepera, comprising two Aus- 

 tralian species, is reduced by Baillon to Securinega ; but I have 

 retained it in the ' Flora Australiensis,' as being well distinguished 

 by habit, by the almost petal-like sepals, by the stamens inserted 

 round a broad flat disk without any rudimentary pistil, and by 

 the undivided styles. Lastly, Fluggea and Breynia differ from 

 all others of the group in the fruit, which is a 3-celled berry, with 

 the dissepiments sometimes so thin as to be scarcely separable 

 from the pulp, and in the seeds, of which the lower part of the 

 crustaceous testa on the inner side is as it were doubled, leaving a 

 considerable cavity between the two folds. In other respects Flug- 

 gea corresponds to Securinega, as Breynia does to PhyUantlius, 

 except that in Breynia there is a further difference in the pecu- 

 liarly shaped male perianth. I have in the 'Flora Australiensis' 

 given the reasons why I cannot concur in Mueller's separation 

 of his Melanthesiopsis from Breynia, In the same work, as there 

 are no true Securinega^ in Australia, I had not occasion to ascer- 

 tain the real distinctness of the two genera united bv Mueller 



