68 



written in Botany, is Mr. Brown's upon these, in the Linaean Society's Trans- 

 actions, from which I find much to extract. According to this botanist, " the 

 radicula pointing towards the base of the fruit in all Proteaceae, is a circum- 

 stance of the greatest importance, in distingushing the order from the most 

 nearly related tribes ; and its constancy is more remarkable, as it is not accom- 

 panied by the usual position or even uniformity in the situation of the external 

 umbilicus." Linn. Trans. 10. 36. Mr. Brown has also remarked, with his 

 usual acuteness, that in consequence of the presence of hypogynous squamae, 

 we may expect to find octandrous genera belonging to this family. See Flin- 

 ders, 2. 606. The same writer observes (Flinders 568), that there is a pecu- 

 liarity in the structure of the stamina of certain genera of Proteaceae, namely 

 Simsia, Conospermum, and Synaphea, in all of which these organs are con- 

 nected in such a manner that the cohering lobes of two different anthers form 

 only one cell. Another anomaly equally remarkable exists in Synaphea, the 

 divisions of whose barren filament so intimately cohere with the stigma, as to 

 be absolutely lost in its substance, while the style and undivided part of the fila- 

 ment remain perfectly distinct. In another place he remarks : " A circumstance 

 occurs in some species of Persoonia, to which I have met with nothing similar 

 in any other plant : the ovarium in this genus, whether it contain one or two 

 ovula, has never more than one cell ; but in several of the 2-seeded species, a 

 cellular substance is, after fecundation, interposed between the ovula, and this 

 gradually indurating, acquires in the ripe fruit the same consistence as the puta- 

 men itself, from whose substance it cannot be distinguished ; and thus, a fruit 

 originally of one cell becomes bilocular ; the cells, however, are not parallel, as 

 in all those cases where they exist in the unimpregnated ovarium, but diverge 

 more or less upwards." Brown in Lin. Trans. 10. 35. This is subsequently 

 explained, by the same author (King's Appendix), by the cohesion of the outer 

 membranes of the two collateral ovula, originally distinct, but finally constituting 

 this anomalous dissepiment, the inner membrane of the ovulum consequently 

 forming the outer coat of the seed. 



Geography. " The favorite station of Proteaceae is in dry, stony, exposed 

 places, especially near the shore, where they occur also, though more rarely, 

 in loose sand. Scarcely any of them require shelter, and none a good soil. A 

 few are found in wet bogs, or even in shallow pools of fresh water ; and one, 

 the Embothrium ferrugineum of Cavanilles, grows, according to him, in salt 

 marshes. Respecting the height to which plants of this order ascend, a few 

 facts are already known. The authors of the Flora Peruviana mention, in gen- 

 eral terms, several species as being alpine ; and Humboldt, in his valuable 

 Chart of Equinoctial Botany, has given the mean height of Embothrium 

 emarginatum about 9300 feet, assigning it a range of only 300 feet. On the 

 summits of the mountains of Van Diemen's Island, in aboxit 43° south lat., at 

 the computed height about 4000 feet, I have found species of Embothrium, as 

 well as other genera, hitherto observed in no other situation. Embothrium, 

 however, as it is the most southern genus of any extent, so it is also, as might 

 have been presumed, the most alpine of the family. Two genera only of this 

 order are found in more than one continent : Rhopala, the most northern genus, 

 though chiefly occurring in America, is to be met with also in Cochin China, 

 and in the Malay archipelago ; and Embothrium, the most southern genus of 

 any extent, is common to New Holland and America. It is remarkable, that. 

 Proteaceaj are almost entirely confined to the southern hemisphere. This ob- 

 servation originated with Dr. Dryander ; and the few exceptions hitherto known 

 to it, occur considerably within the tropic. The fact is the more deserving of 

 notice, as their diffusion is very extensive in the southern hemisphere, not 

 merely in latitude and longitude, but also in elevation ; for they are not only 

 found to exist in all the great southern continents, but seem to be generally, 



