376 Mr. Miers on a new Genus of Plants 
distinct prominent longitudinal parietal lines, that bear in their middle a 
somewhat 2-lobed placenta, on which a number of ovules are crowded. The 
style which terminates the conical disc is short, apparently fistulose, striated, 
expanding towards its apex into a 3-lobed, hollow, cup-shaped stigma, with 
3 rather erect triangular fleshy lobes, which are alternate with the placentz 
(as in Dictyostega) ; these lobes are covered with a mucous exudation and 
numerous hair-like papillee, but after the process of fructification is completed 
the stigmatic lobes become quite glabrous on their surface. The tube of the 
perianth now falls away by a clean horizontal circumscissure, a little above 
the line of its junction with the ovarium : after this, the conical disc of the 
ovarium detaches itself like an operculum, leaving a fleshy open cup, in which 
the seeds appear arranged in 3 clusters, upon the parietal lines above-men- 
tioned. The seeds are numerous, minute, and scobiform, erect, each being 
supported upon a recurved slender funiculus of its own length: the testa is 
quite transparent and reticulate, the cells being narrow and almost scalari- 
form, often the length of the nucleus; beyond this, at each extremity, they 
become much smaller: the inner membrane that immediately covers the 
nucleus is also transparent, but does not fill the entire cavity of the testa; it 
is marked by a few (6 to 8) somewhat hexagonal areolz : the nucleus appears 
to consist of a homogeneous grumous mass, but I have had no opportunity of 
determining the precise nature of its structure. | 
From the above details it will be seen how very closely this plant approaches 
the genus Thismia of the late Mr. Griffith, described in the 19th volume of 
the Society's * Transactions,’ p. 341; and it affords a singular coincidence, — 
that plants of such curious structure, and so nearly allied, should about the — 
same time have been discovered in the Malayan territory, Ceylon, and Brazil — 
I bave lately had an opportunity of seeing in the herbarium of Sir William i 
Hooker dried specimens both of Mr. Griffith’s plant, and of another (proba- — < 
bly the same Species) found near Galle, in the island of Ceylon, by Captain. - i: 
Champion, from both which the Brazilian plant will be seen to differ in many —— 
essential points. [n the latter, the remarkable gibbosity of the perianth is - * 
quite peculiar; its tube is also smooth, not impressed by 6 deep rounded 
srooves, and does not present the 12 crimson-coloured longitudinal rows of — 
prominent tubercles with the intervening grooved lines seen even in the 
