4 MR. 7. МТЕК ON NAPOLEONA, 
The inferior ovary is shortly turbinate, varying in the number of its cells. Beauvais 
figures about 20 radiating cells in his typical species. Jussieu, who reexamined the 
same plant, does not contradict this, but says he found four ovules in each of its cells. 
In N. Heudelotii the ovules are superposed in pairs. In М. Whitfieldii Dr. Lindley 
found the ovary to be 5-celled, with only 2 collateral ovules in each cell. In №. Mann 
Isaw several ovules in each cell superposed in pairs. One curious point of structure 
was noticed by Dr. Lindley in the ovary of №. Whitfieldii which had been preserved in 
spirits: the axis, round which the cells radiate, was hollow, in continuation of the 
hollow style; and an open foramen was seen leading out of that space into each cell, 
above the point of suspension of the ovules. He figures this in fig. 5 (Veg. Kingd. 
p. 728); and he describes, as shown in fig. 6, a depressed dark spot on each side of the 
ovule, which I have witnessed in another species—a circumstance to which I shall have 
to refer presently. 
The fruit is subglobular, about the size of a small apple, deeply umbilicate at the 
summit, within which cavity are seen the persistent sepals, disk, style and stigma; it is 
indehiscent, with а coriaceous pericarp, not always very thick, and varying in the 
number of its cells. 
The seeds are solitary, or 2 superposed in each cell, sometimes enveloped in a thin 
pulp, sometimes without pulp; they are obconically globose, and subangular by com- 
pression, or they are oblong, reniform, laterally compressed, exhibiting generally, in the 
deep ventral sinus, a broad oblong cicatrix, like that in the seeds of many Sapotacea, 
showing where they are agglutinated to the inner angle of the cell and to the sides of 
the dissepiments—an important feature not hitherto observed; the testa is thin and 
membranaceous, generally evanescent. Тһе embryo consists of 2 equal fleshy plano- 
convex cotyledons, with a short radicle, which is hidden between them at the lateral 
sinus, where also a large centrifugal plumule lies concealed. 
The several species described by authors are reduced to two by Messrs. Bentham and 
Hooker (Gen. Pl. i. р. 724), but they are amalgamated into one only by Prof. Lawson 
(Oliv. Afr. Fl. p. 439). It appears to me, on the other hand, from the characters given 
by different authorities, and from others indicated by the specimens in our herbaria, that 
several species may easily be recognized by the following data. Тһе typical species 
comes from the kingdom of Benin, at Waree, on the river Escardos, where, in alluvial 
ground, it forms а small tree, 7 or 8 feet high. Тһе species found by Heudelot in the 
high land of Foota Jalhoo, 1000 feet above the level of the sea, and 500 miles in the 
interior of the Senegal coast, is a tree with a straight trunk 25 to 33 feet high. Most of 
the other species grow near the sea-coast. Vogel’s species has been found at the two 
extremities of the Gold Coast, at Cape Palmas, by Vogel, and at Lagos by Baxter. 
Whitfield’s specimens were found by him at Sierra Leone and the river Nuñez, where it 
forms a shrub with the appearance of a Camellia, 5 to 7 feet in height. Mann’s plant 
from Fernando Ро is a tree 20 to 25 feet high. Mann’s specimens from Old Calabar are 
very different, and form a smaller tree, only 10 to 15 feet high. Welwitsch states that his 
plants from the interior of Angola were obtained from a tree with a simple straight 
trunk, 12 feet high. 
The leaves in Beauvais's plant are oblong, constricted at the summit into an obtusely 
