Dr. Falconer on the AsafcEtida Plant of Central Asia. 287 



juice : vitte of the commissure ranging from 4 to 6, very unequal and variable : one 

 very slender vitta, which is frequently dichotomous in two fine threads confluent at the 

 apex, being placed close on either side of the middle nerve ; another of the size of the 

 dorsal vittae situated more outwards, and a third at the inner side of the dilated border, 

 over the edge of the seed, more slender, but frequently subdivided and interrupted so 

 as to cover the border with a beautiful network of anastomosing ramifications. Seed 

 flattened, with plane albumen. Carpophores bipartite, persistent, twice the length of 

 the pedicels. Flowers white ? 



The plant above described I believe to be the true " Asafcetida Disgunensis" 

 or " Hingisch" of Kaempfer. It does not appear to have been met with by 

 any other botanist since it was examined in situ by that excellent and careful 

 observer upwards of a century and a half ago. 



I have compared my materials with Kgempfer's description and figures 

 (Amcen. Exot. p. 537), and with his original specimens contained in the col- 

 lection in the British Museum, and found them, so far as a comparison could 

 be instituted, to agree in every essential respect. The leaves, " instar Paeonise 

 ramosa," as represented in his figures, have the segments more obtuse and 

 sinuated, and more alternate in their offset than they are represented in my 

 drawing ; but he describes them as being very variable in form, and some of 

 the numerous leaf-specimens in his herbarium correspond with the figures 

 which I have given. Kaempfer mentions the umbellulse as having only 5 or 6 

 rays, whereas I found them as numerous as 25 or 30 in the sterile capitula, 

 and from 10 to 20 in the fertile ones. But he states that he never saw the 

 plant in flower, and his description was probably drawn from the ripe state, 

 in which the partial umbels occasionally present no more than 7 fruit-bearing 

 stalks. There are two mericarps in his herbarium, agreeing exactly in form 

 and in the development of the dorsal juga with those met with by me in the 

 Astore plant : but Kaempfer's specimens are glued down on paper, and they 

 seem to have undergone some decay or alteration by which the vittae have 

 been emptied, so that their number and size cannot be distinctly made out. 

 But they appear to be solitary in the dorsal valleculse, and there is no indica- 

 tion of the numerous striae represented in the figures of the fruit given in the 

 ' Amoenitates,' which may have confirmed authors in the belief that Kaempfer's 

 Asafoetida plant belonged to a species oi Ferula. These mericarps are perfectly 



