224 Mr. Brown on the Female Flower and Fruit 0/ Rafflesia Arnoldi, 



cohering with its sides or base, wholly distinct from each other, and uniformly 

 and densely covered with ovula. 



But although this is the most obvious view suggested by Hydnora, a more 

 careful examination, especially as to the relation of stigmata to placentae, leads 

 to a very different notion of the composition of the ovarium in that genus : for 

 as the placentae correspond with, and may be said to be continuations of the 

 subdivisions of the stigmata, and as these stigmata appear to be three in 

 number, each with numerous subdivisions diverging from the circumference 

 towards the centre of the ovarium, and each of these subdivisions bearing one 

 or more placentae pendulous from its internal surface, the ovarium of Hydnora 

 may be regarded as composed of three confluent pistilla, having placentae 

 really parietal, but only produced at the top of the cavity ; the sides of which, 

 however, exhibit no indication whatever of composition. 



Between this most remarkable structure of Hydnora and that of Cytinus 

 there is some, though not perhaps a very obvious analogy, each of the strictly 

 parietal placentse in the latter being subdivided into distinct lobes, as in many 

 Orchidece, a family which Cytinus also resembles in the structure of the seed, 

 and probably in the mode of impregnation, though so widely different in 

 almost every other respect. 



It would certainly be difficult to reduce Rqfflesia to the view here taken of 

 the formation of the compound ovarium in these two genera ; and it may there- 

 fore, perhaps, be said, that although the structure of Hydnora, in one important 

 particular, suggests or confirms the more probable notion of the composition 

 of ovarium in Rqfflesia, as already stated*, it is in other respects very di- 

 stinct. 



* My confidence in this hypothesis respecting Rafflesia is greatly lessened on considering the struc- 

 ture of the female flower of a lately discovered species of the genus, namely, Rafflesia Cumingii or 

 Manillana, in which the style-like processes terminating the column are much fewer in number, and so 

 arranged as to form a single circular series of about ten, not very distant from the limb, with only from 

 one to three processes within it, which are placed near the centre, while the irregular cavities in the 

 ovarium are evidently much more numerous, and in arrangement have no apparent relation to that of the 

 supposed styles, there being as great complexity in the centre as towards the circumference. These 

 relations between styles and ovarial cavities seem, according to the figures of Rafflesia Patma, to be re- 

 versed in that species, its styles being apparently more numerous than the cavities of the ovarium ; and 

 as even in Rafflesia Arnoldi their correspondence is far from obvious, it would seem that the number and 

 arrangement of these processes afford no satisfactory evidence of the composition of the ovarium in any 



