290 Bibliographical Notices. 



his own genus Vareca belong to three distinct genera. Of the 

 first of these, Vareca Moluccana, he gives from Roxburgh's spe- 

 cimens the character of the female, which alone appears to have 

 been grown in the Calcutta Garden ; Mr. Brown had already, in 

 Dr. Wallich's List, referred the second, V. lanceolata, to Pentaloba, 

 Lour.; and the third, V. heteroclita (also referred by Dr. Wal- 

 lich to Pentaloba), forms a new and very distinct genus in the 

 same remarkable tribe of Violariece. 



The elegant Melastomaceous genus, called Sonerila by Rox- 

 burgh, forms the subject of the forty-fourth article. The species 

 figured is the Sonerila tenuifolia, Bl. The natural relations of 

 this genus were at first strangely misunderstood. Mistaking an 

 expression of Roxburgh's, Sprengel referred it to Burmanniece; 

 and Don, having mixed up with it a species of Argostemma, de- 

 scribed it as monopetalous, mi ordinis, Ericeis affine. Dr. Wal- 

 lich, however, restored it to its proper position among Melasto- 

 macece. In the subdivision of that family into tribes, it has 

 since been variously placed by different authors ; but Mr. Ben- 

 nett is inclined to regard it as having no close affinity with any 

 other genus of the family, except Sarcopyramis, Wall., with which 

 it agrees in all its essential characters, and from which it differs 

 only in points of minor importance. The most remarkable of 

 these characters consists in the opposition of the cells of the ova- 

 rium to the teeth of the calyx, which in this case (as in others 

 previously noticed) "appears to be only of generic value; for 

 although it is found in some other Melastomaceous genera with 

 isomerous ovaria, the ordinary relation is also of frequent occur- 

 rence in the family, and the difference bears no relation to what 

 appear to be its natural divisions. But combined with this 

 structure there also occurs, in Sonerila and Sarcopyramis, a cu- 

 rious modification of the apex of the ovarium, which is surmounted 

 by fleshy scales, opposite to the petals and equal to them in num- 

 ber, between which and the free limbus of the calyx-tube the an- 

 thers are lodged in their early and deflected stage. These scales, 

 which are at first of small size, become (as the capsule ripens) 

 gradually enlarged, thickened, and of a coriaceous texture." The 

 characters of Sarcopyramis are given and compared with those of 

 Sonerila, and a synopsis of the species of the latter, as far as 

 known to the author, concludes the article. 



The next article concludes the third part of the work. It is a 

 most important memoir by Mr. Brown on the tribe Sterculiece, a 

 new genus of which, named by the author Pterocymbium, forms 

 the groundwork of the article. Mr. Brown gives first an elabo- 

 rate historical account of the tribe, and especially of the genus 

 Sterculia, from its formation to the present time, accompanied 

 by critical notes on the successive modifications introduced by 



