46 NEILGHERRY PLANTS. 
anthers. The anther, in the generality of plants, is the yellow, powdery head, supported on 
the slender, thread-like filament, but here, on the contrary, it consists of two cavities, hol- 
lowed out of the apex of the filament, which, in place of containing a quantity of pow- 
dery pollen, are filled with two yellow, waxy-looking, gland-like bodies, attached, two 
and two, by slender prolongations to the corpuscles. These masses are the pollen of 
this order which, in this part of its organization, differs from all other exogenous plants: 
a similar structure is found to exist in the pollen of Orchidez. The pollen masses, when 
removed from their cells and placed in favourable circumstances, produce numerous very 
slender tubes, which, entering the pores of the stigma, pass down into the ovary and 
there fertilize the ovules which it contains. These tubes can, with moderate skill in the 
carpels of which it is composed do not cohere jn the axis, but remain distinct, the two 
apices only coalescing to form one large, usually pentangular, stigma, the angles of which 
bear the corpuscles. The front consists of two (sometimes only one, the other abort- 
ing) long, slender follicles (i. e. fruit opening along one side only), containing numerous 
flattened, pendulous seed, lying over each other like tiles on a house, each furnished at 
the apex with a tuft of long silky hairs, and presenting, when the testa, or skin, is 
removed, two leaf-like cotyledons ending in a pointed radicle. The leaves are in pairs, 
two and two, opposite; without stipules ; and the peduncle, supporting the flowers, is not . 
truly axillary but more or less removed from that point, between the leaves. 
Endowed with structural peculiarities and habits so unique, the station of this order, 
in the vegetable kingdom, is still perhaps a problem to be solyed, but in the present 
state of our knowledge, nearly all Botanists coincide in considering it more nearly allied 
to Apocynacee than any other. The younger De Candolle indeed goes so far as to 
say that the two orders are only kept apart by the difference of their pollen, showing 
how nearly they correspond in their general aspect and properties, when so acute an 
observer, after much study, has come to such a conclusion. It is one however which 
I cannot quite adopt, though I fully admit their near relationship. They seem also 
related to both Jasminee and Loganiacee, but are distinguished by having, like Apo- 
cynacee, a two-parted ovary and follicular fruit, and, usually, milky juice, none of 
which occur in these last-named orders. 
Of their economical applications little need be said here. A few are employed in 
medicine ; some yield dyes; one or two are celebrated for the tenacity of their fibres, 
which are made into cordage, bow strin 
