98 Mr. Griffith on the Indian Species q/'Balanophora, 



The female spike to the naked eye has a papillose and a subverrucose 

 appearance ; uniler an ordinary magnifier it appears covered with truncate, 

 areolate, opake bodies, separated from each other by what appear to be hairs. 

 The truncate areolate bodies will be found on examination to terminate small 

 branches of the spike, on which are arranged (and perhaps exclusively so) 

 the pistilla or female flowers, the styloid terminations of which are the hairs 

 alluded to. 



These pistilla are generally stalked, and appear to be entirely composed of 

 cellular tissue, every cell containing a nucleus. The ovarium is generally 

 ovate, and presents externally the appearance of having a cavity containing a 

 nucleus. This would seem to be its true structure, judging from Bal. polyan- 

 dra. It is gradually attenuated into a style, which, in its earlier stages at least, 

 is closed at the apex, and does not present any surface like that of an ordi- 

 nary stigma. The tissue before fecundation is transparent and uncoloured ; 

 subsequently to that, the style becomes more or less, often completely, ob- 

 scured by brown colour. 



The ovulum, which was only observed in Bal. polyandra, and probably in 

 its impregnated state, appeared to be pendulous from the apex of the cavity 

 of the ovarium ; its constitution was essentially similar to that of the matured 

 embryo. Of its earlier stages I have no knowledge. 



The pistilla at very early periods are mere ovato-conical extensions of the 

 surface of the spike round the bases of larger extensions of the same surface, 

 which subsequently form the receptacles. 



There is very little difference beyond discoloration and a brittleness of 

 tissue between the pistilla of the other species and the fruits o( Bal. picta, in 

 which alone I have observed them in their seemingly ripe state; they have 

 nearly the same size and precisely the same disposition. 



The embryo in this species appeared to be free ; it is a cellular, undivided, 

 albuminous-looking body, of a fleshy, waxy substance ; the cells which com- 

 pose it are rendered opake by grumous, molecular and oleaginous matter, 

 which by pressure may be made to escape into the fluid of the field of the 

 microscope in the form of globular bodies of unequal size, which, as I have 

 mentioned, might be mistaken for spores or grains of pollen. 



Obs. III. — The most remarkable parts of the structure of this genus ap- 



