388 WIGHT ON THE FUUIT Of THE CUCUKBITACE.'E. 



are ils nearest allies. It is not now my intention to examine 

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

 even supposing I possessed tlie requisite materials, which I 

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

 character of the family and fruit. 



The Cuciirbitacece 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. Tliough 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 

 wljich 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 parietal placenta?, 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 the best 

 introductions to botnny in the English language, Dr Lind- 

 ley's, a peponida, the peculiar fruit of the order, is thus de- 

 fined : 



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

 the seeds attached to parietal pulpy placentae. This fruit 

 has its cavity frequently filled at maturity with pulp, in which 

 the seeds are imbedded; their point of attachment is, how- 

 ever, never lost. The cavity is also occasionally divided by 

 projections of the placenta? into spurious cells, which has 

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

 central ceil, which is not only untrue but impossible." 



Dr Arnott in the article " Botany," Encydop. Brit. Ed, 7, 

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

 from a correct one, namely :— 



" A pepo or peponida^ is a fleshy inferior fruit, either 

 indehiscent or bursting irregularly, and consisting of about 



