Dr. Fauconer on the Asafoetida Plant of Central Asia. .287 
juice: vitte of the commissure ranging from 4 to 6, very unequal and variable: one 
very slender vitta, which is frequently dichotomous in two fine threads confluent at the 
apex, being placed close on either side of the middle nerve; another of the size of the 
dorsal vittz situated more outwards, and a third at the inner side of the dilated border, 
over the edge of the seed, more slender, but frequently subdivided and interrupted so 
as to cover the border with a beautiful network of anastomosing ramifications. Seed 
flattened, with plane albumen. Carpophores bipartite, persistent, twice the length of 
the pedicels. Flowers white? 
The plant above described I believe to be the true ** Asafactida Disgunensis” 
or * Hingisch" of Kempfer. It does not appear to have been met with by 
any other botanist since it was examined in situ by that excellent and careful 
observer upwards of a century and a half ago. 
I have compared my materials with Keempfer’s description and figures 
(Ameen. Exot. p. 537), and with his original specimens contained in the col- 
lection in the British Museum, and found them, so far as a comparison could 
be instituted, to agree in every essential respect. The leaves, “instar Pæoniæ 
ramosa,” as represented in his figures, have the segments more obtuse and 
sinuated, and more alternate in their offset than they are represented in my 
drawing; but he describes them as being very variable in form, and some of 
the numerous leaf-specimens. in his herbarium correspond with the figures 
which I have given. Keempfer mentions the umbellule as having only 5 or 6 
rays, whereas I found them as numerous as 25 or 30 in the sterile capitula, 
and from 10 to 20 in the fertile ones. But he states that he never saw the 
plant in flower, and his description was probably drawn from the ripe state, 
in which the partial. umbels occasionally present no more than 7 fruit-bearing 
‘stalks. There are two mericarps in his herbarium, agreeing exactly in form 
and in the development of the dorsal juga with those met with by me in the 
Astore plant: but Keempfer’s specimens are glued down on paper, and they 
seem to have undergone some decay or alteration by which the vittz have 
been emptied, so that their number and size cannot be distinctly made out. 
But they appear to be solitary in the dorsal valleculze, and there is no indica- 
tion of the numerous stri: represented in the figures of the fruit given in the 
* Ameenitates,’ which may have confirmed authors in the belief that Keempfer’s 
Asafoetida plant belonged to a species of Ferula. These mericarps are perfectly 
