AND PECULIAR FORM OF THE EMBRYO IN THE CLUSIACECE. 245 



In the following year M. Cambessedes minutely described the several Guttiferous 

 plants collected by M. Aug. St. Hilaire, in his journeys through Brazil (Elor. Bras. Merid. 

 i. 314 et seq.), and there, in his character of Clusia Criuva, he thus defines its seminal 

 features : " raphe ab hilo ad basin seminis ducta parum elevata ; radicula brevissima, 

 mammseformi, basin seminis hilo contrariam spectante, cotyledonibus coalitis apicem semi- 

 nis hilo proximum spectantibus." Little dependence, however, can be placed upon this 

 ample and precise definition, especially in regard to the terms base and apex, because, as I 

 shall have occasion to show, in the figures 8, 9 and 10 of plate 65 of the work referred to, 

 the seed is placed in a position diametrically opposite to that in which it is attached to 

 the placenta, as the point he there assumes to be the radicle is said to be inferior, and 

 the stipitate or basal support is there represented as an arillus that covers the apex of 

 the seed. It is necessary to bear these circumstances in remembrance, as there is here 

 an evident misconception of the whole structure. 



Prof. Kunth, in his details of the several Guttiferous plants collected in the Voyage of 

 Humboldt and Bonpland, throws no light whatever on this portion of the subject. 



Doctor Von Martius, in his admirable work (Nov. Gen. et Spec. PL Bras.), offers no 

 account, either in his generic or specific descriptions, of the several Guttiferous plants 

 there enumerated, as far as regards the nature of the seed ; but he gives ample details of 

 a plant resembling his Clusia insignis, and named by him Platonia msignis, figuring at 

 the same time the analysis of its fruit and seed. The nucleus enclosed within the testa is 

 there described to consist of a large mass of fleshy albumen, containing numerous oil- 

 cells, and enclosing in its centre a long terete or club-shaped embryo, with a superior 

 radicle, the whole consolidated into one integral inseparable mass. As this form of 

 embryo, and the presence of copious albumen, were facts opposed to the generally received 

 conclusion of botanists, in regard to the structure of the seed in Clusiacece, he suggested 

 the propriety of placing his new genus Platonia in a distinct family, which he proposed 

 to call Canellacece, thus associating it with the little-known Canella alba, a plant greatly 

 differing from it in habit and floral structure, and of which we possess an imperfect 

 knowledge, especially of its carpological features. 



Endlicher, in his ' Genera Plantarum,' gives the characters of the Order and of each 

 genus of the Clusiacece, in accordance with the views of Cambessedes, and arranges Pla- 

 tonia, after Von Martius, in the Canellacea, as a suborder of the Guttiferce. 



Poppig, in his ' Nova Genera et Species,' although he details the characters of several 

 genera and species of Guttiferous plants from Peru and Northern Brazil, and figures some 

 of them, does not enter into any description of the structure of the seed. 



Prof. Lindley, in his ' Vegetable Kingdom,' where he gives an outline of the ordinal 

 characters of the Clusiacece, adopts the views of Cambessedes in regard to the nature of 

 the seed, notwithstanding that he admits Platonia as a member of the family. 



Prof. Miquel, giving in 1844 a detailed account of a species of Arrudea (Linn, xviii. 

 232), follows the example of Cambessedes in misconceiving the structure of the seed, for 

 he describes the embryo as having fleshy plano-convex cotyledons, and a very short radicle. 



Lastly, M. Choisy, in a more recent memoir (1850) * on the Guttiferce of India, and 



* Mem. Soc. Phys. de Geneve, torn. xii. p. 381. 



2 k2 



