BOTANY OF WESTERN INDIA, 35 
The calyx is five-lobed, and alternate with the lobes are five petals, 
many times longer than the calyx-lobes, and caducous. The filaments 
are long, adnate to the petals throughout their whole length (as in Em- 
belia and others of the Myrsineæ), the anthers appearing sessile about 
one-third below the apex of the petal. The disc, which is cushion- ` 
shaped and slightly five-lobed on the summit, has no scales of any 
kind; the stigma is simple. Above the base of the very short pedicel 
are two half-sheathing short bracts, the one a little above the other, and 
of the same texture as the lobes of the calyx ; while the base of the pedi- 
cel is surrounded by 3-4 scurfy-looking scales, The podosperm arises 
from the base of the cavity, and is straight, bearing three pendulous 
ovules at its apex, two of which are always abortive. The seed is 
spherical, with a copious albumen, the embryo not being in the axis 
and at the apex, as in the published species, but lying obliquely, the 
radicle being centrifugal, as in Rubiacee, and forming an angle of 45° 
with the vertical axis of the seed. 
I may take this opportunity of Peer: that I met with the ScZero- 
pyrum Wallichianum in Canara, and that it is not a tree, as Rheede 
supposed, but a weak straggling shrub, often having unbranched 
shoots twenty feet high, and apparently of one year's growth. As 
the structure of the wood of this shrub is very peculiar, and a 
knowledge of it may tend to throw light on its natural affinities, 
which I believe are not supposed to be incontrovertibly established, I 
shall describe it. A transverse section of a stem, an inch and a half 
in diameter, has an ample pith half an inch in diameter, of a yellow 
colour, and more dense than that structure generally is. The medullary 
rays are exceedingly numerous, one-sixth to one-tenth of a line in 2; : 
breadth, and alternate with rays of woody tissue of an equal breadth, 
, or even narrower. In the woody tissue are seen numerous porous = 
vessels or ducts, discernible with the naked eye: this latter cireum- 
stance, together with the cellular tissue of the medullary rays equalling 
or slightly exceeding in bulk the whole woody tissue, produces a wood _ 
as light as cane. Except the walls of the duct, no spiral vessels or 
vessels of any other character are visible ;—this structure is very like 
that of some species of Loranthus. The structure of the seed and the 
position of the embryo in Scleropyrum are the same as in the plant 
above described. N.B. The drupe of Spherocarya leprosa, when 
mature, is spherical, dry, and three-fourths of an inch in diameter. 
