Natural Order Cucurbitaceae. 261 



this question, for which, indeed, I have not at present leisure, 

 even supposing I possessed the requisite materials, which I 

 do not ; but merely to offer a few observations on the general 

 character of the family and fruit, introductory to a Conspectus 

 of the genera of the order, with which Dr. Arnott kindly 

 favoured me, and at the same time permitted me to place on 

 the pages of the [Madras] Society's Journal, should I deem 

 that desirable. Deeming the conspectus really a most desi- 

 rable addition to our Indian botanical literature, I have much 

 pleasure in submitting it for that purpose, in the hope that 

 the Society may be of the same opinion. 



The Cucurbitacece are a tribe of plants so very unlike the 

 rest of the vegetable kingdom, that I think I may safely say, 

 no one having the slightest knowledge of family likeness 

 among plants could ever mistake so far as to refer one of 

 them to any other family. Though thus isolated from all 

 around, and without a single near relation with whom they 

 can be justly compared or confounded, they yet stretch their 

 more remote affinities on all sides ; hence the difficulties which 

 systematic writers find in decisively referring them to any one 

 place, more than another, in the series of orders. Nearly all, 

 however, now agree in placing them among orders having pa- 

 rietal placentae, that is, among plants the ovary of which is 

 one-celled. 



To any one who will take the trouble to look attentively at 

 a slice of a young cucumber this must appear strange, but is 

 yet not the less true. In one of the latest and best introduc- 

 tions to botany in the English language, Dr. Lindley's, a pe- 

 ponida, the peculiar fruit of the order, is thus defined : — 

 " One-celled, many-seeded, inferior, indehiscent, fleshy ; the 

 seeds attached to parietal pulpy placentas. This fruit has its 

 cavity frequently filled at maturity with pulp, in which the 

 seeds are imbedded ; their point of attachment is, however, 

 never lost. The cavity is also occasionally divided by pro- 

 jections of the placentae into spurious cells, which has given 

 rise to the belief that in Pepo macrocarpus there is a central 

 cell, which is not only untrue but impossible." 



Dr. Arnott, in the article Botany, i Encyclop. Brit./ ed. 7? 

 gives a different account of it, but still, it appears to me, far 

 from a correct one, namely, — ie A pepo or peponida is a fleshy 

 inferior fruit, either indehiscent or bursting irregularly, and 

 consisting of about three carpels, each of which is divided into 

 two cells by its placentiferous margin, being so introflexed as 

 to reach the dorsal suture. The sides of the carpel, and even 

 sometimes the introflexed portion, usually become extremely 

 thick and fleshy, forming the great mass of the ripe fruit, so 



