238 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
of the capsule and seeds are totally unlike anything else in 
Gentianeæ. If (and it is a likely mistake to make in examining 
so very delicate a plant without sacrificing several specimens) 
Splitgerber has only miscounted the number of parts of the 
flower, and that there are really six instead of five, then we 
have a Burmanniaceous plant, very near Apteria, of which 
there are several in similar situations in tropical America. 
The differences in habit between Ophelia and Swertia are 
said not to exist by those who have seen them growing, and 
since there are exceptions to all the other distinctive charac- 
ters, even to that derived from the style, the two genera must 
probably be reunited. 
The three next orders, Bignoniacee, Sesamee and Cyrtandra- 
cee, by the elder De Candolle, with notes and additions by his 
son, are perhaps rather out of place here ; but as there is great 
difficulty, not to say impossibility, in arranging the mo- 
nopetalous orders in a natural linear series, it was considered 
on the present occasion preferable to publish what were 
ready for the press in some kind of order, though not the 
best that could have been suggested, rather than wait till the 
whole of the orders were finished, which alone could have 
given an opportunity of combining them in the best manner. 
There is no doubt, however, that the group now in question 
should include Gesneriacee (to which Brown has satisfactorily 
reduced Cyrtandree as a tribe) and Orobanchee. These are all 
among bicarpellary Corolliflore, allied to Scrophulariacee 
and Acanthacee by their irregular flowers, either positively 
irregular by the abortion of the upper stamen and the 
so-called bilabiate æstivation of the corolla, or in a few cases 
with the irregularity indicated only by the estivation, and 
(excluding the true Pedaliee) by the cells of the ovary con- 
taining more than two ovules, or if two only, not collateral. 
On the other hand, they all differ from Serophulariacee and 
other allied orders, by the placentation, which is not truly 
axile, but more or less parietal ;* that is to say, that in the 
* We do not here take into consideration the vexata questio whether in” 
