272 Linnean Society. [Jan. l7j 



distinct flat dissepiment, and arranged in three superimposed pairs 

 upon its opposite faces, in two lines parallel with the axis, a structure 

 which offers a marked character in the Bignoniaceec, and unknown 

 in the Myoporace(B ; of these twelve ovules, all become abortive, 

 with the exception of one ; the fruit is therefore 1-locular and mo- 

 nospermous, presenting an osseous nut, with four deep furrows in 

 the apex, and divisible to the base along these striae into four valves, 

 two of these sutures being more easily separable, and always corre- 

 sponding with the margin of the persistent dissepiment, which is 

 pressed against one side, and which distinctly exhibits on both faces 

 its several abortive ovules, the ripened seed filling the whole capacity 

 of the nut. In Myoporacece, whether the nut be 4-celled, or by abor- 

 tion 2-locular, the intervening space is always solid, and perfectly 

 indehiscent, leaving small circular cells, surrounded by thick 

 ligneous walls, without showing any marks of division ; there is no 

 analogy whatever between this structure and that of Oxycladus. 

 The absence of the alary expansion of the testa, so common in 

 Bignoniacece, is urged as a reason for excluding this genus from that 

 family, but the argument is not valid, where as in Oxycladus only 

 one of the ovules becomes impregnated, and where it is thus left at 

 full liberty to acquire the size and shape of the whole space of the 

 cell. The want of wings in the seeds occurs however in other 

 Bignoniaceous plants ; for instance in Spathodea of Palisot de 

 Beauvois, from which all the species from the New World referred 

 to that genus have been rightly separated by Chamisso under the 

 name of Dollchandra. Mr. Miers has also found in Brazil another 

 Bignoniaceous genus, Adenocalymna, the carpological characters of 

 which are yet undescribed, which has a cylindrical, capsular, 2-celled 

 fruit, containing several large, thick, angular seeds, attached by a 

 large hilum to the broad dissepiment, and without wings. In 

 Argylia the seeds are likewise apterous. The last consideration as 

 regards Oxycladus is not the least important ; its seeds are exalbu- 

 minous, as in Bignoniacece, whereas in those of the Myoporacea the 

 embryo is always contained within albumen. 



After the comparison of these several circumstances, the author is 

 unable to perceive the existence of any marked affinity between 

 Oxycladus and any genus of the Myoporacece, and therefore sees no 

 reason to alter the conclusion at which he formerly arrived, that this 

 genus, although deviating from the usual form of its fruit and seed, 

 bears in every essential respect all the characteristic features of a 

 member of the family of the Bignoniaceee. It is not however in the 

 singularity of the lai-ge , fleshy cotyledons, or the wingless state of 



