~ 
a new Natural Order. 413 
habit is rather that of a Lycium; its leaves simple, fasciculated, and without 
stipules; its flowers solitary; its embryo evidently curved, and including, 
according to Mr. Harvey, on its concave side a small quantity of albumen,— 
all characters which militate against so close a connexion with Melianthee as 
other points of structure, and especially that of the fruit, are calculated to 
suggest. 
Melianthece, as defined above, might be said to be an exclusively African 
tribe, if the existence of Melianthus Himalayanus, Wall., in the mountains of 
Northern India did net contradict so general an assertion. As no species of 
Melianthus has been observed in the intermediate regions between the Cape 
and the Himalaya, we may truly wonder, as Dr. Lindley observes, at the un- 
expected distribution of the genus; but that very fact must guard us against 
the danger of hastening to draw general inferences upon the geographical 
distribution of plants, since the only satisfactory results of that most import- 
ant study must proceed from the careful limitation of the orders, tribes, genera, 
subgenera and species, from a knowledge of their mutual affinities, in short, 
from an analytic, comparative and comprehensive view of the immense sphere 
of vegetable creation. What I have to offer upon that point, in this particular 
case, is but a mite compared with the mass of the work ; but, as it is, I have 
summed it up in the following synoptical table, which is the anticipated re- 
sult of the systematical part of this paper. 
Synoptical. Table of the Geographical Distribution of MELIANTHE. 
Sect. Eumelianthee. Sect. Bersamez. 
T Melianthus. Diplerisma. Natalia. Bersama. 
Cape of Good Hope . .| M. major. ... B ndi 
Port Natal, : 
(Subtrop. S.E. Africa.) $ 4.7.9 u$.» 1T...» v» N. lucida. 
E poire Leone, N. Paullinioides. 
(Trop. W. Africa.) ob ee T OE ov rw BE Oe d .I8 ni 5 
: B. Abyssinica. 
Pg tl . ss] sr rceva in a e a a 
Kamaon, 
(Subtrop. N. India.) M.Himalayanus. 
seer ee E 89 
