MR. (*. BENTHA.M OX EUPHORBIACEJE. 215 



a single tropical African species, with a hard globular loculicidal 

 capsule. On this account Mueller proposed removing the 

 genus to Sapindaceae, from which it appears to me to differ in 

 several important particulars, and the loculicidal dehiscence 

 with entire valves is now known in Euphorbiacese of various 

 tribes. 2. JBischqfia, a single tropical Asiatic species with an 

 indehiscent berry. And 3. Piranhea, a single tropical American 

 species with a hard globular capsule, separating at length into 

 shortly 2-valved cocci. Although these three genera may differ 

 considerably from each other, yet neither of them appears to be 

 nearly connected with any other one. 



Our last group is characterized chiefly by the inflorescence, 

 which I once thought might have been sufficient to raise it to 

 the rank of a distinct tribe ; and some of the genera have even 

 been regarded as types of distinct orders ; but the other charac- 

 ters have proved so various, though always within the general 

 limits of Phyllanthese, that I have followed Mueller in including 

 them in that tribe. The leaves are alternate and undivided, the 

 male flowers in catkin-like or slender spikes or racemes either 

 simple or paniculately branched, the calyx variously divided but 

 not valvate, the petals rare, the stamens usually but not quite 

 always uniseriate round a central disk or rudimentary pistil, the 

 styles various. The fruits suggest the subdivision of the group 

 into two series. In the first w r e have nine genera, with the fruit 

 drupaceous and indehiscent, or very rarely opening tardily in 

 loculicidal valves, viz. : — 1. Uapaca, 7 African or Mascarene 

 species, with the globular male amenta and solitary female 

 flowers enclosed in globular involucres of four or six bracts, which 

 become reflexed as the flowers expand ; the flowers are apetalous, 

 the males with a minute calyx, the females without any at all. 

 It is true that both Mueller and Baillon describe the involucre 

 of the female flower as a calyx ; but it is so precisely similar in 

 form and insertion to the male involucre that it is difficult to 

 deny its homology. The fruit is fleshy, with three pyrenes. 

 2. Aporosa, the typical genus of Lindley's order Scepaceae, but 

 really closely allied both to Baccaurea and to Antidestna ; some 

 species even have been first described under the latter name. It 

 is chiefly exceptional in the rudimentary pistil of the male flowers 

 being exceedingly minute or wholly wanting. The ovary is 

 2-celled ; but the fruit, a small/almost dry drupe, ripens usually 

 only a single seed, as in Antidestna, or very rarely opens at length 



