III.] cue URBITA CE^. 2 1 5 



remarkable for the great variety, in form, of the fruit. It 

 is often very variable in the same species, as in the Gourd 

 and Bottle Gourd. The firm outer pericarp, hollowed out, 

 serves a variety of purposes ; it is often ornamented by 

 painting or burnt lines. 



Many species are intensely bitter, and some are dangerous 

 poisons, as the Colocynth {Citrullus colocynthus). Besides 

 the species named as types, the following are employed 

 in India as food-plants (most of them are cultivated) : — 

 Karivia uinbellata, Momordica charantia^ M. dioica, Ltiffa 

 pentandra^ L.fcetida, Benincasa cerifera^ Trichosanthes anguina 

 (the Snake Gourd), Coccinia grandis, and others. 



Allied to the Gourds, and scrambling or climbing by the 

 aid of tendrils, are the Passion-flowers {Passiflorece)^ an 

 Order principally South American, but represented in India 

 by a few native species, and several cultivated in gardens 

 for the sake of their beautiful purple, scarlet, or greenish- 

 white flowers. They differ from the Gourds in their herma- 

 phrodite flowers, superior, often stalked ovary, and the 

 beautiful corona of filiform appendages arising from the 

 tube of the calyx, as well as in other characters. A 

 few Passion-flowers yield an eatable fruit, as the Granadilla 

 {P. qiiadra?igitiaris) of the West Indies. 



Observe the remarkable habit and the structure of the 

 sulphur-yellow flowers of the Prickly Pear {Opimtia DiUenii)\ 

 the representative, very widely naturalized in India, of an 

 almost exclusively American Family, the Cactaceae. This 

 Family is characterised by remarkable succulence, and by a 

 tough impervious skin or epidermis, which checks undue 

 evaporation of the juices in the arid climates to which the 

 group is principally confined. Very few possess developed 



