246 MR. MIERS ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE SEED 



some little-known American plants of this Order, gives many interesting observations on 

 the organography, affinities and subdivisions of the family, as a prelude to a review of the 

 various genera and differential characters existing between them. It is, however, singular, 

 that in a memoir of such length, where he discusses fully the general structure of the 

 Order, he does not make the smallest allusion to the important question of the nature of 

 the seed, concerning which so many uncertainties and incongruities are known to exist : 

 this is the more remarkable, because in the interval of nearly thirty years since the appear- 

 ance of his previous memoir, the facts subsequently published are at variance with his 

 former views on this subject. 



As the results of my inquiries are widely different from the conclusions of Cambessedes, 

 which have been almost universally adopted by botanists, it will be better to select from 

 my several observations the analysis of the fruit of a species closely allied to the Clusia 

 Criuva, Camb., upon the examination of which that able botanist principally relied, in 

 the construction both of his ordinal and generic characters. Here the fruit is an oval 

 drupaceous-looking capsule, 10 lines long and 8 lines in diameter ; it is 5-celled, with 5 

 very thick fleshy valves, which break away by their margins from the edges of the par- 

 titions, and become rotately expanded, leaving a large erect 5-winged column, in the 

 angles of which the seeds are fixed. Each cell contains about 12 seeds, enveloped in a 

 thick mucilage, and these are attached horizontally by one extremity to the placentary 

 column, in two longitudinal rows. The seed is of an oval form, about £th of an inch in 

 length, and is slightly gibbous on the upper or dorsal side, the lower or ventral face pre- 

 senting a prominent keel, extending from the base to a swollen point near the apex. The 

 external tunic, at first thick and fleshy, and of an orange colour, forms when dried a thinner 

 tough skin, and when it is scraped off, the keel seen on its ventral face is found to cover 

 a bundle of fibres in the form of a raphe, one end of which proceeds from the stipitate base 

 of the covering and the point of its attachment to the placenta, as well as to the body 

 which it encloses, the other end terminating near the summit by a sudden reflexion, 

 where it enters an aperture through the crustaceous integument of the seed : this is a 

 hard, brittle shell, striately punctate, of an oval form, and a little flattened at the base, 

 where, somewhat excentrically, is seen a very small point or cicatrix at the origin of the 

 raphe-like cord : on the contrary or apical extremity, always somewhat on the ventral 

 side, and around the opening through which the raphe-like cord penetrates the shell, is 

 observed a prominent ring, radiately striated, forming a hollow cup : this outer shell is 

 smooth within, and lined with a very thin free integument, that is contracted near the 

 summit by a narrow neck of a darkish colour, by which it is suspended and connected 

 with the extremity of the raphe-like cord : the solid nucleus filling the cavity of this 

 integument is of a pale greenish colour, marked by numerous very distinct, prominent, 

 parallel and longitudinal lines of an orange colour, which do not reach the base, but ter- 

 minate round a flattened colourless space, like that seen in the outer shell, and in the 

 middle of which a minute shining tubercular point is observed : the apex of the nucleus 

 is distinguished by a short hemispherical nipple- shaped protuberance of a smaller 

 diameter, which is divided to its base by a distinct transverse cleft into two equal portions, 

 the bottom of this commissure on the ventral side corresponding with the dark-coloured 



