78 MR. BENTHAM ON LOGANIACE^E. 



t. 25) do not in any respect differ from a stunted state of 8. nux- 

 vomica, which, according to Dr. Wight, is not uncommon about 

 Madras. All writers describe the leaves and fruit of 8. nux-vomica 

 as very variable in size. DeCandolle says, indeed, that the colour 

 of the fruit of 8. nux-vomica is of a brown-red, and that of 8. li- 

 gustrina of a yellow-green; but we learn from Roxburgh and 

 Eheede, as well as from verbal communications of those who are 

 familiar with the tree, that the fruit of 8. nux-vomica, at first of a 

 yellow-green, assumes at length a rich orange-yellow. The figure 

 of Eumphius, vol. ii. t. 38, quoted for the 8. ligustrina, evidently 

 represents some totally different plant. It is without flowers, 

 and has neither the foliage nor the fruit of a 8trychnos. 



8. colubrina is generally supposed to be a scandent nux-vomica 

 with simple tendrils, and is consequently placed among the long- 

 flowered species by DeCandolle. The original must be taken to 

 be Eheede's Modira Caniram from Malabar, vol. viii. t. 24, which 

 has not been identified by subsequent writers; for the only 

 Malabar species like it which is known has been universally 

 distinguished under Leschenault's name of 8. bicirrhosa, as having 

 the tendrils forked instead of simple as figured by Eheede. I 

 find them, in such specimens as our herbaria afford, almost uni- 

 versally forked, but I have also met with simple ones even on the 

 same specimen. The 8. bicirrhosa has a very short tube to the 

 corolla, but so also may 8. colubrina for anything in Eheede's 

 figure or description to the contrary, and I feel little doubt in my 

 own mind of the identity of these two species. 



Linnseus, in quoting Eheede's Modira Caniram, refers by mistake 

 to another plate of the ' Hortus Malabaricus,' vol. vii. t. 5, which 

 represents his Tsjeri Katu Valli Caniram, a smaller species from 

 the islands off the coast, which Eheede clearly distinguishes. 

 Blume has identified this with a not uncommon Cingalese species 

 which he has described under the name of 8. minor, and which, 

 besides minor differences, appears to have the flowers almost uni- 

 versally tetramerous instead of pentamerous. 



Wallich has described under the name of 8. colubrina a Silhet 

 species which I am unable to identify, there being no specimens 

 of it in his collections, and none answering to his description in 

 either Griffith's, Hooker and Thomson's, or any other of our 

 Khasiya collections. It must be very near to the true Malabar 

 species ; Wallich does not indeed particularly describe the corolla, 

 but says generally that the flowers are small. A Malacca plant 

 in Griffith's collection agrees, however, still better with Wallich's 



