AND PECULIAR FORM OF THE EMBRYO IN THE CLUSIACEÆ. 245 
In the following year M. Cambessèdes minutely described the several Guttiferous 
plants collected by M. Aug. St. Hilaire, in his journeys through Brazil (Flor. Bras. Merid. 
i. 314 ef seq.), and there, in his character of Clusia Criuva, he thus defines its seminal 
features: “raphe ab hilo ad basin seminis ducta parüm elevata; radiculà brevissimá, 
mammreformi, basin seminis hilo contrariam spectante, cotyledonibus coalitis apicem semi- 
nis hilo proximum spectantibus." Little dependence, however, can be placed upon this 
ample and precise definition, especially in regard to the terms base and apex, because, as I 
shall have occasion to show, in the figures 8, 9 and 10 of plate 65 of the work referred to, 
the seed is placed in a position diametrically opposite to that in which it is attached to 
the placenta, as the point he there assumes to be the radicle is said to be inferior, and 
the stipitate or basal support is there represented as an arillus that covers the apex of 
the seed. It is necessary to bear these circumstances in remembrance, as there is here 
an evident misconception of the whole structure. 
Prof. Kunth, in his details of the several Guttiferous plants collected in the Voyage of 
Humboldt and Bonpland, throws no light whatever on this portion of the subject. 
Doctor Von-Martius, in his admirable work (Nov. Gen. et Spec. Pl. Bras.), offers no 
account, either in his generie or specific descriptions, of the several Guttiferous plants 
there enumerated, as far as regards the nature of the seed ; but he gives ample details of 
a plant resembling his Olusia insignis, and named by him Platonia insignis, figuring at 
the same time the analysis of its fruit and seed. The nucleus enclosed within the testa is 
there described to consist of a large mass of fleshy albumen, containing numerous oil- 
cells, and enclosing in its centre a long terete or club-shaped embryo, with a superior 
radicle, the whole consolidated into one integral inseparable mass. As this form of 
embryo, and the presence of copious albumen, were facts opposed to the generally received 
conclusion of botanists, in regard to the structure of the seed in Clusiacee, he suggested 
the propriety of placing his new genus Platonia in a distinct family, which he proposed 
to call Canellacee, thus associating it with the little-known Canella alba, a plant greatly 
differing from it in habit and floral structure, and of which we possess an imperfect 
knowledge, especially of its carpological features. 
Endlicher, in his ‘Genera Plantarum,’ gives the characters of the Order and of each 
genus of the Clusiacee, in accordance with the views of Cambessédes, and arranges Pla- 
tonia, after Von Martius, in the Canellacee, as a suborder of the Guttifere. 
Pöppig, in his ‘ Nova Genera et Species,’ although he details the characters of several 
genera and species of Guttiferous plants from Peru and Northern Brazil, and figures some 
of the structure of the seed. 
of them, does not enter into any description L ; 
Prof. Lindley, in his * Vegetable Kingdom,’ where he gives an outline of the ordinal 
characters of the Cusiaceæ, adopts the views of Cambessèdes in regard to the nature of 
the seed, notwithstanding that he admits Platonia as a member of the family. s 
Prof. Miquel, giving in 1844 a detailed account of a species of Arrudea (Linn. xviii. 
232), follows the example of Cambessèdes in misconceiving the structure of the seed, for 
he describes the embryo as having fleshy plano-convex cotyledons, and a very short radicle. 
Lastly, M. Choisy, in a more recent memoir (1850) * on the Guttifere of India, and 
* Mém. Soc. Phys. de Genéve, tom. xii. p. 381. 
; 2x3 
