244 MR. MIERS ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE SEED 
the aperture in the extremity of the testa, the whole nucleus forming, in his own peculiar 
technology, “an epispermic antitropal embryo." There is, however, one essential error 
in this otherwise correct description ; like other botanists, he has mistaken the base for 
the apex of the seed. 
Jussieu, in 1813, in a memoir upon the characters of the Hypericine and Guttifere, 
drawn from the structure of their seeds*, observes, that if the remarkable fact above 
recorded by so accurate an observer as Richard, be exact, Clusia cannot belong to Gut- 
tifere, but must constitute the type of a distinct family nearer to the Maregraaviacee. 
Choisy, in 1822, in a memoir upon the family of the Guttiferæt, ascribes in its ordinal 
character features altogether different from those of Jussieu, and equally opposed to the 
description of Gærtner. He states that the seeds are without albumen, that the embryo 
is erect, and that the cotyledons are large, fleshy, either separable or combined in one 
mass. In Garcinia, he says, the seeds are arillate, and the cotyledons thick and con- 
joined; but in Clusia he declares that these presumed cotyledons are separable, a feature 
that no succeeding botanist has verified. He alludes in no way to the very different 
structure recorded by Richard, of the seed in Clusia, although, when he stated the 
separability of the cotyledons in that genus, this idea may probably have been derived 
from some indistinct recollection of the analysis of that eminent carpologist. 
The description of the Guttifere in DeCandolle’s celebrated * Prodromus? (1824) is 
_ confessed to be a mere recapitulation of the above-mentioned memoir, and consequently 
the same characters are there repeated upon the authority of Choisy. 
Cambessédes, in a very able essay upon this Natural Order, and on its relation to the 
Ternstremiacee, published in 1828 1, affirms that throughout the family of the Guttifere 
“l'embryon est droit, les cotyledons sont grands, épais, très entiers, soudés ensembles ; 
la radicule est très petite, en forme de mamelon; sa direction, relativement au point 
d'attache de’ la graine, mérite la plus grande attention, et démontre jusqu’à l’évidence, 
que dans les familles les plus naturelles, les caractères, considérées dans la plupart des 
cas comme de la première valeur, peuvent varier dans les genres d’ailleurs extrêmement 
voisins. Dans le Clusia Criuva, dont je possède des graines dans un état parfait de 
maturité, la radicule est tournée vers l'extrémité de la graine la plus éloignée du point 
d'attache.” I shall presently demonstrate that this statement is founded on error, and 
that the inferences above drawn are illusory. In that memoir the embryos of Clusia and 
Calophyllum are described as being erect, inverted, the small mammæform point, which 
he calls the radicle, as being at the apex or opposite extremity to the basal hilum of 
attachment; while in those of Mammea and Mesua, the radicle is said to be small, and 
pointing in a contrary direetion, that is to say, to the basal point of attachment.’ He 
therefore erroneously concludes, that in this family the embryo is either homotropal or 
antitropal, or in other words, that the radicle is sometimes directed to that point of the 
seed next the hilum, at others, towards the, opposite extremity. It is, however, fair to 
mention that he had not confidence in the correctness of these observations, and stated 
his doubts on this point, for the guidance of future botanists. nes! | 
* Ann. du Mus. xx. 463. + Mém. Soc. Phys. de Genève, tom. i. t Mém. du Mus. xvi. 369. 
