28 NEILGHERRY PLANTS. 
The principal peculiarity of this order lies in the stamens, the filaments of which 
are much dilated at the base and adhere by their margings, forming a cup, which incloses 
the ovary. This peculiarity has led to their being placed at a considerable distance from 
Celastrinee, though in reality very nearly related. ‘The two Indian genera are separated by 
three well marked points of structure. In Hippocratea the anthers open across the apex, 
the fruit is capsular, and the seed are winged. In Salacia the anthers open longitudinally, 
the fruit are baccate, and the seed wingless. ‘They also differ in habit, in the former the 
flowers are panicled, in the latter, fascicled in the axils of the leaves. 
Of the genus Salacia De Candolle described 12 species in 1824 ; between that date 
and 1842, 19 were added to the list, and the one here figured makes twenty, being equal to 
an increase of 160 per cent in twenty years. The number of new species throughout the 
vegetable kingdom generally, discovered in that time, certainly does not equal that average, 
though I believe it may with perfect safety be estimated at from 70 to 80 per cent. A most 
extraordinary fact, as affording a conclusive example of the very engrossing influence this 
most fascinating science is capable of exerting over the human mind, to have called forth 
such an astonishing amount of mere animal exertion, exclusive of the dangerssurmounted and 
privations endured by its votaries, in the prosecution of their favourite pursuit. Linneus in 
1760 knew about 8,000 species, and estimated that 10,000 would comprise the flora of the 
world, 68 years after in 1828, Sprengel defined, in his species plantarum, 60,000, and now in 
1845, descriptions of not fewer than 100,000 are scattered through our Botanical literature, 
and probably fully 20,000, still undescribed species, already exist in the Herbaria of Europe. 
At this rate, I believe, we may at a moderate computation, estimate the flora of the world at 
oyer 200,000 species. 
SALACIA, 
Calyx 5-cleft. Petals 5, inserted between the torus and the calyx. Stamens 8, inserted on the top 
of the torus or between the torus and ovary : filaments flat, distinct : anthers adnate 2-celled ; lobes divaricat- 
ing at the base, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary 3-celled: ovules 2 or more in each cell. Style short. 
stigma obsoletely 3-lobed. Fruit indehiscent, fleshy, often 1-celled from abortion. Seeds solitary in each 
cell, wingless, covered with pulp.—Shrubs or small trees. Flowers in axillary corymbs, or more frequently, 
from the abortion of the common peduncle, on simple 1-flowered pedicels arising from a small axillary 
tubercle ; rarely (ever ?) in axillary dichotomous panicles.— W. and A. Prod. p. 104, 
The species of this genus are for the most part rambling shrubs with numerous small aggregated 
axillary flowers and several with large fruit. The seed of this species and of our S. oblonga are large, fleshy 
masses without any appearance of cotyledons or radicle, so that their true structure, whatever that may be,will 
require to be made out by causing the seed to vegetate, a method which I neglected to adopt at the time of 
obtaining the specimens and am now unable to state what it is, 
Satacia MacrosrErema (R. W.) a diffuse, rambling This — seems nearly allied tomy 8S. verrucosa 
shrub; =_ oblong, elliptic, acuminated, corracious, but wants the warty stems, and has a ciliated, in 
glabro owers numerous, fasicled, short pedi- place of pps calyx. ‘The plants, besides, when 
celled : : ais 5-lobed fringed with rusty coloured compared, s m quite distinct, though the differences 
hairs : petals ovate, obtuse, broad at the base : Ovary are not pane — in words. ‘The structure of the 
3-celled with —— ovules in each: fruit anthers ee ovary amply distinguish it from m 
irregularly ovate, few seeded: seed ovoid conferu- multiflora; in this the anthers open longitudinally, in 
see: without ac Sicldenses radicle. that te ails : here the ovules are two super- 
les about Sisparah flowering, and at the same — ss — call there they are numerous, forming 
bearing fall, sone fruit i in April. 
