80 ME. BENTHAM ON LOGANIACE^!. 



a doubtful species, has been since referred by its author to 

 Garissa. 



S. JJnguacha, A. Rich., from Abyssinia, extending, if I mistake 

 not, across to Senegambia, an unpublished species gathered by 

 Forbes at Delagoa Bay, and S. Zokna, A. Eich., unknown to me, 

 but from his description intermediate between the two, are Afri- 

 can arborescent species, corresponding in habit, inflorescence and 

 flowers with the well-known East Indian 8. potatorum. 



S. scandens of Schumacher and Thonning, from West tropical 

 Africa, can, from the descriptions given, scarcely belong to the 

 genus. The leaves, if I understand them rightly, are penninerved, 

 the stamens inserted near the base of the corolla, the lobes of the 

 corolla elongated and slightly contorted, and the fruit a " bacca 

 capsularis;" all which would rather indicate some Apocyneous 

 plant allied to Vahea. Vogel's collection from the Niger does 

 indeed comprise a scandent cirrhiferous Strychnos, but it is evi- 

 dently not Thonning' s plant. It is in fruit only, and without 

 the flower cannot be distinguished from several of the Indian 

 ones. 



The St. Ignatius' s bean, a Philippine Island seed, whose medical 

 properties have been so highly extolled by Loureiro and other older 

 writers on Indian botany, as well as by Blanco among modern ones, 

 has been described and figured by Gaertner and others, showing all 

 the characters of a Strychnos. The plant which furnishes them is 

 unknown to all modern botanists. The younger Linnaeus alone 

 professes to have been acquainted with it, and has characterized it 

 as a distinct genus, under the name of Ignatia. He does not tell 

 us where he procured the specimens from, but says generally, 

 " Hab. in India." The species does not, however, appear to have 

 been ever cultivated in India, where the seed alone is imported. 

 Eoxburgh does not mention it : Loureiro introduces it into his 

 flora as an imported seed, taking the characters of the flower from 

 Linnaeus. Even Blanco in the Philippine Islands could never pro- 

 cure more than a dried specimen, an "arbolito " of a man's height, 

 in leaf only, without flowers, although he says it is common in the 

 Bisayas provinces of the islands. He vainly endeavoured to cause 

 the seeds to germinate ; they all rotted in the ground, although, 

 hearing from an old woman that they would grow if steeped in 

 vinegar, he tried that and other means of exciting them. Turning 

 to Sir James Smith's herbarium, where the younger Linnaeus's 

 plants are generally preserved, I find in the cover of Ignatia two 

 good specimens of Posoqueria longiflora, one from Guiana, from 



