258 Linnean Society. [Nov. 15, 



Trichosanthes , but in fruit widely different from any of the extensive 

 Natural Order to which it belongs. It has been extremely well 

 described by Roxburgh as a species of Trichosanthes, and was 

 cultivated many years ago in the Calcutta Botanic Garden, where it 

 is now lost. A figure of the female flower is also in the Museum of 

 the India House. i2oo^ branching. Stem climbing for SO to 100 feet, 

 festooning lofty trees. Wood of very remarkable structure. The al- 

 most axillary conical bodies, referred to buds, but generally described 

 as stipules, are most remarkable and deserve careful study. Flowers, 

 xerj handsome, appear in May, and the fruit ripens in autumn and 

 •winter; female flowers are rare, and from being solitary, are less 

 conspicuous than the males. Ovarium covered with small warts 

 that project through the dense, almost velvety, rusty pubescence, 

 1 -celled with three parietal placentse, that project into the axis, and 

 clearly show the normal structure of Cucurbitaceous fruits to have a 

 parietal placentation ; cavity of the ovarium filled with watery pulp, 

 that hardens as the fruit advances to maturity and becomes of the 

 consistency of a hard turnip, full of watery fluid that escapes in 

 large drops when the fruit is pierced. Ovules suberect, in pairs, 

 each pair collateral and at right angles to the radius of the ovary ; 

 of these the ovule next the axis ripens, and that next the circum- 

 ference of the ovary becomes accrete to the outer one and seldom 

 ripens. This position and oeconomy of the ovules is quite unique 

 in the order. Flowers about 4 inches long ; the limb 3 inches in 

 diameter, inodorous ; fringes of the petals 5-6 inches long. Calyx 

 with several deep brown polished tubercles or warts towards each 

 angle or tooth. Tube of the calyx lined with a thickened disc, which 

 surrounds the style and is in contact with it ; it lines the staminal 

 tube of the male flower. Berry 6-10 inches across, of a fine deep 

 red-brown colour, covered with a very short tomentum ; pulp whitish. 

 Seeds erect, very large, each double, resembling a 2-celled nut, 

 covered with an adherent vascular pulpy coat, which penetrates deep 

 fissures in the free face of the larger seed. Testa hard, somewhat 

 porous ; the free surface of the larger seed deeply grooved in anasto- 

 mosing channels ; outer surface rather corky or spongy, inner hard, 

 smooth, polished. The testa is slit longitudinally down its base 

 towards the hilum for one half or one inch in the larger seed, and 

 has a smaller corresponding slit on the smaller nut. A compressed 

 prolongation of the endopleurum (which is verj' soft, thick and 

 corky) projects a little through this fissure, and the radicle points 

 towards it. Embryo flat, of the form of the seed, occupying a 

 narrow slit in the centre of the endopleurum, nearly as broad as the 



