vill PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
Read, secondly, a Letter from Dr, Thomson to Dr. Hooker, on 
some plants collected at Aden. 
Read, thirdly, the following “ Note on Omphalocarpon procerum, 
Pal. Beauv.;’? by George Bentham Esq., V.P.L.S. (accompanied 
by specimens). 
The specimens now exhibited were gathered by Mr. Mann on 
the Cameroon River, in West Tropical Africa, and from the simi- 
larity of the general aspect of the tree, its foliage, and the remark- 
able fruits growing sessile on the main trunk, I have no hesitation 
in referring them to the Omphalocarpon procerum of Pal. de 
Beauvois, who found the tree in nearly the same district of West 
Tropical Africa, and figured it in his “ Flore d’Oware et de Benin,” 
vol. i. p. 7, pl.5 & 6. Our flowers are indeed very different in the de- 
tails of their structure from those described by De Beauvois ; but 
any one who has much studied the above-quoted work, will have 
detected many instances where the detailed analyses of the flowers 
are very incorrect, owing sometimes to the fragmentary state of 
the specimens, at others to their having been mismatched, or the 
parts totally wanting supplied from recollection, or even from the 
imagination of the artist. Our flowers, like his, are females only ; 
but instead of being distinctly gamopetalous, an inch long, with 
numerous imbricate sepals, I find 5 orbicular, concave sepals, about 
3 lines diameter, the 2 outer ones very thick; 5 petals not larger 
than the sepals, similar in shape, but thinner and slightly connate 
at the base, where they are also united with the base of the bar- 
ren filaments ; these are numerous and short, the inner ones united 
in 5 laciniate scales. The ovary is conical with a thin sessile disk- 
like terminal stigma very minutely toothed; the cells are nume- 
rous, annular, with a single laterally attached ovule in each. 
The fruits, although far from having attained their full size, are as 
figured by De Beauvois, except that they present in their centre a 
curious spherical cavity from which the cells radiate. Our seeds 
are too young to show their internal structure, and still flat; but 
they have the remarkable long hilum figured. 
From these particulars it appears evident that the tree belongs 
to Ternstramiacee, and not to Sapotacee. In the absence of the 
male flower, its precise position in the order cannot be fixed. 
The flowers are those of Ternstramiacee proper; the fruit comes 
perhaps nearest to that of Pyrenoria; and the seed, if correctly 
