96 Mr. Brown, on the Proteacee of Jussieu. 
me to suppose that it is the organ secreting the liquor amnios. 
This opinion I was first led to form by observing in some species 
‘of Persoonia, in which the inspissated remains of .this fluid are 
visible in the ripe fruit, that it evidently originated in the cha- 
laza and continued to adhere to it: nothing has hitherto oc-. 
curred to invalidate this opinion, which is here however hazarded 
merely as a conjecture, requiring for its confirmation more nu- 
merous and decisive facts than I can at present adduce. . 
‘That the ALBUMEN of seeds is merely that condensed portion 
of the liquor amnios which remains unabsorbed by the embryo, 
seems to me very satisfactorily established; and as this fluid is 
in the early stage never wanting, all seeds may in one sense be 
said to have albumen: but while in some tribes this unabsorbed 
|» part in the ripe seed many times exceeds thesize of the embryo, so 
there are others in which not a vestige of it remains; and such has 
hitherto been supposed to be the case with Proteacez: nor are. 
the few exceptions with which I am at present acquainted of so - 
decisive a nature as to invalidate this character of the order ; for - 
they occur only in some species of .Persoonia, where the semi- 
fluid remains of this substance are observable between the coty- 
ledons; and in Be/lendena, in which it continues to form a thin 
fleshy coat on the inner surface of the proper membrane of the - 
seed. From such instances however we may expect to find plants 
with a more copious albumen, which nevertheless it maybe neces- 
sary from the whole of their organization to refer to this family. 
The RAD1cULA pointing towards the base of the fruit in all 
Proteacee is a circumstance of the greatest importance in di» 
stinguishing the order from the most nearly related tribes; and . 
its constancy is more remarkable, as it is not accompanied by >- 
the usual position or even. uniformity in the: Hin. of ‚the 
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