Materials for a Flora of the Malayan Peninsula. 119 



scattered hairs. Seed solitary, flattened, the abortive seed very small, 

 both pendulous. 



The genus Gonocaryum was first published by Miquel in bis Fl. 

 Ned. Ind. Suppl. p. 343, to receive the single species G. gracile. The 

 generic description is incomplete as i-egards the structure of the seed, 

 but the specimens with which the author worked have no seeds. 

 I have had an opportunity of carefully examining these specimens and 

 I find that Miquel's description is, as regards the structive of the ovary 

 which is found in the staminferous flowers, inaccurate. He describes 

 two styles and stigmas, whei'eas, I can find only one of each. And to 

 this extent, I have modified as above the generic desci"iption. I think 

 it highly probable however, that fertile ovaries occur (as in so many 

 members of this family) in distinct flowers, and that these may possibly 

 have two stigmas like Pteleocarpa and Gardiopteris, Of sucli flowers 

 however, there is no trace in the scanty materials on which Miquel found- 

 ed the genus. There are two fruits however on one of the type speci- 

 mens, and a transverse section of these shows a vertical cavity in the sub- 

 stance of the thick mesocarp on one side which has all the appearance 

 of an aborted loculus. The single perfect seed which has filled the loculus, 

 is too much decomposed for examination. In their Genera Plantar am, 

 Messrs. Bentham and Hooker remark (in a note), that they have seen 

 no specimen of Gonocaryum Miq. And without admitting it as a genus 

 of Olacinese, they quote Miquel's genera description. The late Mr, 

 S. Kurz, in a note in Journ. As. Soc. Bengal for 1870, Pt. 2, p. 72, pro- 

 pounded the view that Phlehocalymna Griff. MSS., as described by Messrs. 

 Bentham and Hooker (Genera Plantarum I, 353) is identical with 

 Gonocaryum. Kurz, who had examined the specimens on which Miquel 

 founded Gonocaryum, also believed Miquel to be wrong about the cells 

 of the ovary; for he states that " the ovary is really one-celled and, to 

 judge from the sterile fruits, 2-ovuled." The abortive seed in the fruit 

 which Kurz examined was, he continues " suspended from the apex just 

 beneath the acumen, and there can be observed also the rudiment of the 

 second superposed ovule," But Kurz entirely overlooked the cylindrical 

 cavity of the abortive loculus. Dr. Scheffer in (Ann. Jard. Bot. Bui- 

 tenzorg I, 96), published a note on the genera Gonocaryum and Phleho- 

 calymna, of neither of which had be seen (as he states) good or authen- 

 tic specimens. In that paper Di\ Scheffer follows Kurz in reducing 

 Phlehocalymna to Gonocaryum. Scheffer gives also a definition of Gono- 

 caryum which differs a good deal from Miquel's. And he describes two 

 new species of this modified Gonocaryum (viz., G. Teysmannianum and 

 G. jpyriforme). I have examined the latter, and I do not find it to be a 

 Gonocaryum at all, as Miquel defined the genus. Beccari (Malesia I, 



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