376 Mr. MiERS on a new Genus of Plants 



distinct prominent longitudinal parietal lines, that bear in their middle a 

 somewhat 2-lobed placenta, on which a number of ovules are crowded. The 

 style which terminates the conical disc is short, apparently fistulose, striated, 

 expanding towards its apex into a 3-lobed, hollow, cup-shaped stigma, with 

 3 rather erect triangular fleshy lobes, which are alternate with the placentae 

 (as in bictyostega) ; these lobes are covered with a mucous exudation and 

 numerous hair-like papillae, but after the process of fructification is completed 

 the stigmatic lobes become quite glabrous on their surface. The tube of the 

 perianth now falls away by a clean horizontal circurascissure, a little above 

 the line of its junction with the ovarium : after this, the conical disc of the 

 ovarium detaches itself like an operculum, leaving a fleshy open cup, in which 

 the seeds appear arranged in 3 clusters, upon the parietal lines above-men- 

 tioned. The seeds are numerous, minute, and scobiform, erect, each being 

 supported upon a recurved slender funiculus of its own length : the testa is 

 quite transparent and reticulate, the cells being narrow and almost scalari- 

 form, often the length of the nucleus ; beyond this, at each extremity, they 

 become much smaller: the inner membrane that immediately covers the 

 nucleus is also transparent, but does not fill the entire cavity of the testa ; it 

 is marked by a few (6 to 8) somewhat hexagonal areolae : the nucleus appears 

 to consist of a homogeneous grumous mass, but I have had no opportunity of 

 determining the precise nature of its structure. 



From the above details it will be seen how very closely this plant approaches 

 the genus Thismia of the late Mr. Griffith, described in the 19th volume of 

 the Society's 'Transactions,' p. 341; and it affords a singular coincidence, 

 that plants of such curious structure, and so nearly allied, should about the 

 same time have been discovered in the Malayan territory, Ceylon, and Brazil. 

 I have lately had an opportunity of seeing in the herbarium of Sir William 

 Hooker dried specimens both of Mr. Griffith's plant, and of another (proba- 

 bly the same species) found near Galle, in the island of Ceylon, by Captain 

 Champion, from both which the Brazilian plant will be seen to diff^er in many 

 essential points. In the latter, the remarkable gibbosity of the perianth is 

 quite peculiar ; its tube is also smooth, not impressed by 6 deep rounded 

 grooves, and does not present the 12 crimson-coloured longitudinal rows of 

 prominent tubercles with the intervening grooved lines seen even in the 



