a new Natural Order. 



413 



habit is rather that of a Lycium ; its leaves simple, fasciculated, and without 

 stipules ; its flowers solitary ; its embryo evidently curved, and including, 

 according to Mr. Harvey, on its concave side a small quantity of albumen, — 

 all characters which militate against so close a connexion with Melianthece as 

 other points of structure, and especially that of the fruit, are calculated to 

 suggest. 



Melianthece, as defined above, might be said to be an exclusively African 

 tribe, if the existence oi Melianthus Himalayanus, Wall., in the mountains of 

 Northern India did not contradict so general an assertion. As no species of 

 Melianthus has been observed in the intermediate regions between the Cape 

 and the Himalaya, we may truly wonder, as Dr. Lindley observes, at the un- 

 expected distribution of the genus ; but that very fact must guard ns against 

 the danger of hastening to draw general inferences upon the geographical 

 distribution of plants, since the only satisfactory results of that most import- 

 ant study must proceed from the careful limitation of the orders, tribes, genera, 

 subgenera and species, from a knowledge of their mutual affinities, in short, 

 from an analytic, comparative and comprehensive view of the immense sphere 

 of vegetable creation. What I have to offer upon that point, in this particular 

 case, is but a mite compared with the mass of the work ; but, as it is, I have 

 summed it up in the following synoptical table, which is the anticipated re- 

 sult of the systematical part of this paper. 



Synoptical Table of the Geographical Distribution of Melianthece. 



