408 Dr. Puancuon on Melianthee, 
flowers bearing the strictest analogy to the normal or usual structure of those 
of Melianthus, we shall be inclined to take so striking a conformity as a sign 
of some close connexion; and perhaps the very couflicting points, which are 
distinctive generic marks of the plants under consideration, will throw a new 
and unexpected light upon their general as well as mutual affinities. 
The plants I have been just alluding to are no ideal types, but two remark- 
able genera lately discovered in several parts of tropical and subtropical 
Africa, one of them, Natalia, Hochst., being represented by one species in 
Port Natal, on the coast of Cafferland, and by another species in Sierra Leone; 
while the two known species of Bersama, Fresen. (the second genus), 
seem to be confined within the limits of the Abyssinian flora. Both genera 
agree in their habit and structure to such a degree as to leave no doubt of 
their being rightly approximated by M. Hochstetter, although M. Endlicher, i 
probably through a pardonable inadvertence, leaves Bersama among Ampeli- 
dec, whose characters are totally at variance with it; while, at the suggestion 
of M. Hochstetter, he assigns to Natalia a place among Sapindacee, On the 
other hand, M. Ach. Richard, who in his ‘Tentamen Flore Abyssinie’ has 
recently given a correct figure of Bersama, seems to make no doubt of its 
being a true Meliacea; although the position of the disc, outside instead of 
inside of the stamens, would suffice to exclude the genus from that very clearly 
defined order, and point out its affinity to Sapindacee. But if Natalia and 
Bersama are in fact closely allied to this last group, it is no less certain that 
they do not come within its limits: for the want of albumen, and the greater 
or less curvature of the embryo, are characters of primary, and one may say, 
necessary importance in Sapindacee; and, contrary to this, Bersama and 
Natalia have like Melianthus a narrow, straight embryo in the axis of à 
copious albumen. 
But, to revert to the analogies or differences between those plants and 
Melianthus, let us take a short notice of the flower of Natalia. There the 
calyx is comparatively small, and its irregularity not very striking. How- 
ever the two inferior of its five segments are connected into one, with only à 
slight emarginature to mark their limits. Five unguiculate and thick petals 
alternate with the calycine segments, above which their nearly uniform bor- 
ders are almost equally spread. But a closer examination shows that the 
