and on various Plant* reUded to them. ;{j;{ 



Obs. I.-IU this .singular plant I would wish to commemorate the lata 



Mr. Thomas Smith, the discoverer of one of the motl important point. oi 



vegetable structure, on which a very general rule has been founded. To his 

 great merits the following quotation from Mr. Robert Brown'i remark* 

 Kingia bears the motl satisfactory testimony :-•• I wu aware of the exist- 

 ence, in several plants, of a foramen in the coatfl of the ovulurn, always dietinct 

 from, and in some cases diametrically opposite to, the external umbilicus, and 

 which I had in no instance found cohering either directly with the parietes of 

 the ovarium or with any process derived from them. Jim M I vvas then 

 unable to detect this foramen in many of the plants which I had examined, I 

 did not attach sufficient, importance to it ; and in judging of the direction of 

 the embryo, entirely depended on ascertaining the apex of the nucleus, either 

 directly by dissection, or indirectly from the vascular cord of the outer mem- 

 brane; the termination of this cord affording a snre indication of the origin 

 of the inner membrane, and consequently of the base of the nucleus, the 

 position of whose apex is therefore readily determined. In this state «»l ,„y 

 knowledge the subject was taken up in 1818 by my lamented friend the late 

 Mr. Thomas Smith, who, eminently qualified for an investigation where minute 

 accuracy and great experience in microscopical observation were necessary, 

 succeeded in ascertaining the very general existence of the foramen in the 

 membranes of the ovulurn. But as the foramina in these membranes invari- 

 ably correspond with each other and with the apex of the nucleus. a test of 

 the direction of the future embryo was consequently found nearly as universal 

 and more obvious than that which I had previously employed."— Appendix to 

 Capt. P. P. King's Coasts of Australia, ii. p. 54 J. 



foliorum. Spicae bracteatae, densiflor*. Flores minuti, pallide brunnei. Capsula ecristata. Semina 

 albuminosa. Embryo dicotyledoneus. 



The Burmannia belongs to a form not uncommon in some parts of India characterized by an absence 

 of ordinary leaves and green colour, smaU stature and few flowers, which are either white or blue. It 

 would appear to approach the Gonyanthes of Blume. While Salomonia aphylla is curious as an instance 

 of specific parasitism on roots, unaccompanied by the ordinary modification of form of the embryo, 

 Burmannia is perhaps equally curious for exhibiting instances of the form of embryo usually associated 

 with parasitism on roots, in connexion, in one form, with apparent parasitical habits, in the other with 

 leaves apparently of ordinary structure and function. 



VOL. XIX. o Z 



