264 



BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



a good climate, combined with his youth, will soou enable him to 

 recover his health and strength completely. 



ELEMENTARY BOTANY OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY. 



By A. K. Nairne. 



In the paper which appeared in the Society's Journal for January, 

 1889,1 described a number of common plants of Western India 

 belonging to several different orders but all agreeing in having tubu- 

 lar and more or less two-lipped corolla, and four stamens on the 

 corolla arranged in a longer and a shorter pair (didynamous). In 

 this paper I shall confine myself to the plants of one great order — 

 the largest but one of all the natural orders— Leguminosce. This 

 has an immense number of species spread all over the globe, and 

 derives its name from its fruit, a legume or pod. A legume is 

 described as a two-valved fruit opening length-ways, and having 

 the seeds attached along the inner edge of the valves, that is, 

 along the side of the pod which does not open. 



This may be called the constant feature of the order, but it is not 

 sufficient for the unlearned ; because there are many plants in the 

 order in which the fruit is so modified as not to be easily recognised 

 as a pod, and there are also some plants belonging to other orders 

 with fruit not easily distinguishable from pods. It is therefore 

 necessary to look for a second feature common to the Leguminosce, 

 and this as regards a great majority of its plants is found in the 

 corolla. 



In my first paper I mentioned the great distinctions of monopeta- 

 lous and polypetalous corollas. The corollas in Leguminosce is of the 

 latter sort, that is, of separate petals. There is however a great dis- 

 tinction between different flowers, which is more easily recognisable 

 even than that already named, i. e., the distinction of regular and 

 irregular corollas. Those are called regular in which the petals, if the 

 flower is polypetalous (or the divisions of the corolla if it is rnonope- 

 talous), are equal and symmetrical, so that no difference can be seen 

 between the upper, lower, right or left side of the corolla. But the 

 first glance at an irregular flower shows that it has no such uniform 

 symmetry, the centre of the flower being unequal, surrounded by the 



