70 ox A CHINESE SCHEWPINE. 



ing the surface. With that species ours also agrees in the dry black- 

 ish fruit, though the component drupes are far less numerous, larger, 

 and differently shaped. P. {Rijckia)furcatus, Eoxb., a widely diffused 

 species, which seems to iiave some points of agreement, has a thick and 

 sometimes lofty caudex. In the curious flagelliform extremity of the 

 leaf, the Chinese species agrees with F. repens, Ruraph., a plant of 

 dubious affinity, one form of which has also variegated foliage. Al- 

 together, it seems to some extent to weaken or invalidate Kurz's 

 group. 



1 may take this opportunity of pointing out that, by some unfor- 

 tunate mischance, the late Professor Miquel, when describing aud 

 figuring the drupes and seed of P. fiircatus, Roxb.,* represented the 

 putamen as perforate at the apex, and produced into a point at the 

 base; and the fibrous appendage of the seed as arising from the apex, 

 near the chalaza. This is the actual reverse of the fact, the spiny 

 process of the putamen being, I suppose, only the indurated base or 

 sheath of the stigmatic conal, whilst the fibrous coma certainly 

 proceeds from the hilum, and close to the micropyle, at the lower 

 extremity of the anatropal seed. I regret that all the seeds I have 

 dissected were shrivelled up within, and did not admit of a proper in- 

 vestigation of their structure ; but there is no doubt of the accuracy of 

 what I have stated. 



Postscript. — Some time after this notice was drawn up, I was glad 

 to have an opportunity of examining carefully fresh fruits and seeds 

 of P. odoratissimus, Linn., the more so as, unlike the plant above de- 

 scribed, it belongs to the phalangial series. In this I find the stigmas 

 sometimes sessile and subsessile, but, on the other hand, the style is 

 not unfrequently very well developed. The upper portion of each 

 drupe is loosely filled with transverse laminge of cellular tissue, con- 

 necting the prolonged extremities of the fibjes o)' the raesocarp with 

 the spiny summit of the putamen, which latter can be quite readily 

 traced up to the stigma. The putamen, which is distinctly perfo- 

 rated at the base, has its inner wall of a lustrous bay-brown. 

 The seed, about 6 lines in length, is oblong, and sessile near 

 the base of the cell on the closely-matted flat fibrous bundle 

 which always lines that angle of the putamen situated nearest 

 the axis of the syncarpium, and which process has been variously 

 interpreted as raphe, strophiolum, or placenta, the last-named 

 being, I think, without doubt, the correct view. The testa is 

 whitish, and without any apparent raphe or chalaza, though MM. Le 

 Maout and Decaisne (Traite gen. de Bot., 626) describe the latter as 

 " tres-apparente." The basal seed-coma, at its origin, is compressed 

 into a shining cone, and its fibres coalesce a little lower with those of 

 the placenta. The cylindrical embryo is only about half a line in 

 length, and the copious albumen at the base of which it lies is so 

 oleaginous as to leave a permanent grease-stain if pressed on paper, 

 and burns as readily as an almond. Tlie result of the above observa- 

 tions, verified by the dissection of a considerable number of drupes, is 

 to prove beyond a doubt that Miquel totally misunderstood (as I have 

 before stated) tlie fruits he examined. 



* Analecta botan. ind., pt. ii., 14, t. 2, flF. k, 1. m. ; partly reproduced in the 

 F'. Ind. bat., iii., t. 37. Both diupfs and peeds are here inverted. 



