Prof. Don’s Descriptions of Indian Gentianeze. 505 
Menyanthes and Villarsia, has been recently separated from Gentianee on 
account of their alternate lobed or crenated leaves, characters which appear. 
to arise from the peculiar cireumstances under which the plants live, and 
perhaps of as little importance as the entire absence of those organs in the 
parasitical genera Vohiria and Leiphaimos ; and the arrangement of the leaves 
is of less importance, since they are alternate in two species of Swertia. 
I had formerly proposed (Edinb. Phil. Journ., July 1831, p. 275,) to refer 
the remarkable genus Desfontainia* to the Gentianec, but from the circum- 
stance of its possessing a multilocular ovarium, deciduous corolla, witli im- 
bricate cestivation, undivided stigma, opposite, spinously toothed, penninerved 
leaves, it is evident that the view which I then took of its affinities was erro- 
neous; and I think it not improbable that it will be found to be more nearly 
related to Hricacee than to any other family. In my description I have de- 
scribed the berry as unilocular, with 4 or 5 parietal placentæ, but I now find 
that it has the cells complete, and is therefore multilocular. The structure 
and position of the anthers are very different from that of Ericacew, and bring 
the genus nearer to Gentianew ; but I am inclined to regard it as the type of a 
group, alike distinct from these families as well as from Solanew, with which 
it has also been associated. 
I have confined myself in this paper to the description of the species col- 
lected by Dr. Royle, who has liberally placed in my hands that portion of his 
herbarium for this purpose, and some of the more remarkable species will be 
found represented in his interesting work on the Botany of the Himalayan 
Mountains. In the arrangement of the species I have adopted some of the 
divisions of the Linnzean genus Gentiana, first suggested by Renealmus, and 
* My learned friend Sir William Jackson Hooker, in the first number of his interesting and useful 
work, ‘‘ Icones Plantarum," has published a figure of what I have long considered to be a third species 
of this genus, and which was first collected by my excellent friend Captain Phillip Parker King, R.N., 
in the Straits of Magellan and in the archipelago of Chiloé, and for which I beg to propose the fol- 
lowing name and character: 
D. fulgens, foliis cuneato-oblongis dentato-spinosis glabris subtüs glaucis: dentibus divaricatis, seg- 
mentis calycinis oblongis ciliatis, corolla calyce 5-pló longiore. 
Desfontainia spinosa. Hook. Ic. Plant. t. 33. haud aliorum. 
The three species, although nearly related, are nevertheless essentially different in their leaves, calyx, 
and in the proportions of their corolla. 
YOL. XVII. 3 U 
