2 DR. J. D. HOOKER ON THE STRUCTURE AND 



Australia, tlurin<? the voj-age of H.M.S. "Rattlesnake;" and I have also received it from 

 Tanna (the place of its original discovery hj Forster), where it was collected by Mr. Hinds, 

 diu-in"- the visit of H.M.S. " Sulphvir " to that island : — these I have compared with 

 Forstcr's original specimens in the British Museum. 9. For other species I have been 

 indebted to various sources, including the herbarium of the British Museiun, which con- 

 tains the original spccunen of Lophophijtum mirahile*. 



The total number of species thus brought together is about twenty-eight, of which I 

 have examined both sexes of t^^'enty-six. 



I have not considered it necessary to give a detailed list of the authorities who have 

 written upon this Order, nor a history of the successive additions that have been made to 

 oiu" knowledge of it ; these subjects having been minutely and well detailed by Richard, 

 Griffith, and Endlicher ; and a resjime of them by Dr. Lindley will be found in his 

 valuable ' Vegetable Kingdom.' I may however mention that, in their several ways, the 

 original Essay of the great Linnaeus tipon Ctjnomorium, in the fourth volxune of the 

 ' Amcenitates Academicoe,' — the admirable one of Richard on Cynomorium, Selosis, and 

 Laiigsdorffia, in the ' Mcmoires du Museum,' — Goeppert's very valuable remarks on the 

 anatomy of the Javanese species, in the ' Nova Acta,' — Mr. Griffith's observations in the 

 19th and 20th volumes of our Society's Transactions, — Schott and Endlicher's paper in 

 the ' Meletemata,' and Weddell's paper in the fourteenth volume of Ser. 3. of 'Ann. Sci. 

 Xat.,' are by far the most important. A very complete summary of other authors will be 

 found in Unger's paper upon parasites in the Annals of the Vienna Museum ; since which 

 period, however, Goeppert's, Griffith's and Weddell's papers have appeared, as also 

 Junghulm's in the ' Nova Acta,' all of which are accompanied by valuable plates. 



1. Parasitism and Structure of the Mliizome. 

 I shall employ the term rhizome for the principal axis of Btdanopliorece : it was 



• Since the above was read before the Linnean Society I have examined several other coUectious, of which the most 

 important are — 10. The original specimens o( Langsilorffia and Ilelosis, collected by Von Martins, and preserved at 

 Munich ; 11. those of Scijballum (which are to this day nnique), in the Vienna Herbarium ; 1 2. the valuable collec- 

 tion in the Jardin des Plantes at I'aris. I have also to record my great obligations to my friend M. Weddell of Paris, 

 who has already contributed so much to our knowledge of the plants of this Order, and through his good offices to the 

 Museum of the Jardin, for specimens of Lophophytum in several stages of growth, of Omhrophytum peruvianum, of 

 Coryncea TTedileUii, and of Lanyadorffia ruhiyinosa ; all collected by Weddell in Bolivia, Peru and Brazil ; for 

 drawings of these made on the spot by himself; for dissections of Sarcophyte aanyuinea, showing the central 

 embryo which he discovered and figured, and for others of Langsdorffia hypogeea with the fruit fully formed, and 

 which confirm Liebmann's drawings and descriptions of the fruit of that genus. 



The result of the materials thus added has been to strengthen the views I have adopted of the structure and 

 affinities of the Order, to enable me to classify Sarcophyte with Monostyli, and to reduce the subgenus Lepidophytttm, 

 which I had proposed, to the previously imperfectly known Lophophytum, with which I had doubtfully associated it. 



I have also to express my obligations to our ingenious and accomplished foreign member M. Hofmeister of I.eipsic, 

 for showing me his drawings of the impregnated ovule of Cynomorium, with the pollen-tube in the foramen of the 

 ovule : this, which is the most important discovery in favour of my view of the normal condition of the nucleus of the 

 ovule and function of impregnation in the embryonate species, is also a most remarkable instance of skilful dissection. 

 I am encouraged to hope that M. Hofmeister will take up the subject of the embryogeny of the Bulanophorece, and 

 need hardly add, that from his unrivalled skill as a phytotomist, and extensive acquirements in embryogeny, the 

 subject will receive the fullest illustration at his hands. — December 4th, 1805. 



