2 DR. J. D. HOOKER ON THE STRUCTURE AND 
Australia, during the voyage of H.M.S. “Rattlesnake ;” and I have also received it from 
Tanna (the place of its original discovery by Forster), where it was collected by Mr. Hinds, 
during the visit of H.M.S. “Sulphur” to that island :—these I have compared with 
Forster’s original specimens in the British Museum. 9. For other species I have been 
indebted t6 various sources, including the herbarium of the British Museum, which con- 
tains the original specimen of Lophophytum mirabile*. 
The total number of species thus brought together is about twenty-eight, of which I 
have examined both sexes of twenty-six. 
I have not considered it necessary to give a detailed list of the authorities who have 
written upon this Order, nor a history of the successive additions that have been made to 
our knowledge of it; these subjects having been minutely and well detailed by Richard, 
Griffith, and Endlicher; and a réswmé of them by Dr. Lindley will be found in his 
valuable ‘ Vegetable Kingdom.’ I may however mention that, in their several ways, the 
original Essay of the great Linnæus upon Cynomorium, in the fourth volume of the 
‘Ameenitates Academicee,’—the admirable one of Richard on Cynomoriwm, Helosis, and 
Langsdorffia, in the * Mémoires du Muséum,’—Gceppert’s very valuable remarks on the 
anatomy of the Javanese species, in the * Nova Acta, —Mr. Griffith's observations in the 
19th and 20th volumes of our Society’s Transactions,—Schott and Endlicher’s paper in 
the * Meletemata,’ and Weddell’s paper in the fourteenth volume of Ser. 3. of * Ann. Sci. 
Nat.,’ are by far the most important. A very complete summary of other authors will be 
found in Unger’s paper upon parasites in the Annals of the Vienna Museum; since which 
period, however, Goeppert’s, Griffith’s and Weddell’s papers have appeared, as also 
Junghuhn’s in the * Nova Acta,’ all of which are accompanied by valuable plates. 
4. Parasitism and Structure of the Rhizome. 
I shall employ the term rhizome for the principal axis of Balanophoreæ: it was 
* Since the above was read before the Linnean Society I have examined several other collections, of which the most 
important are—10. The original specimens of Langsdorfia and Helosis, collected by Von Martius, and preserved at 
Munich; 11. those of Seybalium (which are to this day unique), in the Vienna Herbarium; 12. the valuable collec- 
tion in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. I have also to record my great obligations to my friend M. Weddell of Paris, - 
. who has already contributed so much to our knowledge of the plants of this Order, and through his good offices to the , 
Museum of the Jardin, for specimens of Lophophytum in several stages of growth, of Ombrophytum peruvianum, of 
Corynæa Weddellii, and of Langsdorfia rubiginosa ; all collected by Weddell in Bolivia, Peru and Brazil; for 
drawings of these made on the spot by himself; for dissections of Sarcophyte sanguinea, showing the central 
embryo which he discovered and figured, and for others of Langsdorfia hypogæa with the fruit fully formed, and 
which confirm Liebmann’s drawings and descriptions of the fruit of that genus. 
The result of the materials thus added has been to strengthen the views I have adopted of the structure and 
Mini of the Order, to enable me to classify Sarcophyte with Monostyli, and to reduce the subgenus Lepidophytum, 
which I had proposed, to the previously imperfectly known Lophophytum, with which I had doubtfully associated it. 
I nave aliy to express my obligations to our ingenious and accomplished foreign member M. Hofmeister of Leipsic, 
for showing a m drawings of the impregnated ovule of Cynomorium, with the pollen-tube in the foramen of the 
ovule: this, n is the most important discovery in favour of my view of the normal condition of the nucleus of the 
ovule and function of impregnation in the embryonate species, is also a most remarkable instance of skilful dissection. 
. lam encouraged to hope that M. Hofmeister will take up the subject of the embryogeny of the Balanophoreæ, and 
need hardly add, that from his unrivalled skill as a phytotomist, and extensive acquirements in embryogeny, the 
subject will receive the fullest illustration at his hands.— December 4th, 1855, 
