INDIAN SPECIES OE FTEICULAEIA. 173 



important specific characters upon tliem. I have examined the 

 seeds of many species, and believe that marked characters, avail- 

 able in their discrimination, are, in some instances, afforded by 

 them. The variety in their form and surface is striking ; but we 

 are yet very deficient in information as to whether parallel differ- 

 ences are presented in the internal structure of the seed, which it 

 is extremely difficult to investigate in many instances — in part 

 from the excessively oleaginous nature of the cell-contents, and 

 perhaps, too, the relatively small or imperceptible cotyledons. Of 

 the older descriptions of Indian TItricularicd, the most important 

 are those of Linnseus and Vahl. Prom the accumulation of 

 species subsequent to their period, the extreme brevity of their 

 notices, and the imperfection of the absolute material upon which 

 they were framed, it is very difficult, and frequently indeed im- 

 possible, to arrive at a confident determination of their species. 

 When authentic specimens have been accessible to me (as in the 

 case of the Linnean Herbarium) corresponding sufficiently nearly 

 with the published descriptions of the author, I have adopted the 

 Herbarium names ; in the case, however, of a few of Dr. Koenig's 

 plants in the collection of the British Museum, which appear to 

 be unusual or aberrant forms of frequent species, or else very im- 

 perfect and insufficient for positive determination, I have not 

 thought it desirable to disturb nomenclature unduly by the adop- 

 tion of the Vahlian names which, with reason, may be supposed 

 to apply to them. Examples of a TItricularia, however, in that 

 herbarium, from Dr. Koenig, bearing the name TT. flexuosa Vahl, 

 together with the description of that species in the * Enumeratio 

 Plantarum,' compel me to give it its fair precedence, at the sacri- 

 fice of Dr. Roxburgh's generally adopted name, TT. fasciculata. 



In the distribution of the Indian species in this paper, for the 

 purpose of ready reference, I have availed myself of sectional 

 characters, based upon, chiefly, the presence or absence of a leafy 

 axis, whether submerged or terrestrial; the attachment of the 

 squamsB* and bracts ; the length of the pedicels ; the direction and 



* I employ the word ' squa^mcB,^ with previous writers, to denote the minute 

 empty scales attached, like the bracts, sometimes by the base, sometimes about 

 or below the middle, to the scape. Although the transition to these from the 

 true leaves at the base of the scape, or, when present, from the capillary seg- 

 ments of the submerged axis, may be very abrupt, I take them to be reduced 

 foliar organs, referable probably to the ' hypsophyllary' series, and correspond- 

 ing to similar appendages in Fi/rola, &c. 



At the base of the pedicel, in nearly all of the Indian species destitute of a 

 floating axis, are found, by and within the bract '^as noted in the sectional cha- 



