NOTE ON YAV.EA AND RHYTIDANDRA. 333 



consequence in a question of affinity, since it occurs in so many plants of widely 

 different families ; but it equally exists in many MeUacea;. 



Nevertheless, the stronger tendency of Styvax and of the Ilumiriacea: would appear 

 to be in another direction, although the limits between the Sfj/racece and the MeUacea 

 cannot be determinately fixed, until the seeds of PamphiUa and Foveolaria are properly 

 known. But it is singular that so acute a botanist as Mr. Miers, who proposes to 

 separate Styrax widely from the Sijmplocinece,* — allowing only a distant relationship 



phrase, wiUi a slight and unimportant transposition, is repeated by Alph. Dc Candollc in his character of the 

 genus. On the other hand, Mr. Miers, in his cliaracter of the family and his analysis of a S(i/rax, already 

 referred to, states of the ovules, that they have the " upper row erect, the middle horizontal, the lower 

 pendulous." In no species have I been able to verify the former statement ; that of Mr. Miers is borne out by 

 S. officinale, S. grandifolium., and some other species. But this is not true of the whole genus. Zuccarini 

 describes the ovules of S. Japonicum as all erect ; the plate represents them as all ascending (which is 

 doubtless what was meant), as inspection shows them to be; and so I believe they arc in S. Americanum 

 and some other American species. 



Mr. Miers also describes and figures the ovary of Slijrax as " trilocular only at the base, but unilocular at 

 the summit," and naturally refers to this character as confirming the relationship of Styrace<T with the Ohicacca- 

 I do not find it so in the species I possess, but rather with the dissepiments extending quite to the summit of 

 the ovary, although early separating from the ovuliferous a-xis as the ovary enlarges ; that is, " parietibus in- 

 completis ab a.xi central! demum distantibus," as stated by M. Alph. De Candollc. 



A more anomalous character, attributed, by Mr. Miers alone, to the ovary (not only of Slyrax, but of the 

 order Slyracece, as he limits it), namely that of bearing " a remarkable depressed epigynous gland upon its 

 apex," I am wholly unable to confirm. In Styrax tomentosum, and to some extent in S. camporum, the 

 ovary may be observed of nearly the shape delineated in Mr. Miers's sketch (1. c. fig. 4), that is, constricted 

 below ; but what answers to the " epigynous gland " is only the ordinary epidermis of the ovary with its 

 downy covering, unaffected by the pressure of the base of the corolla and the stamincal tube which 

 closely encircles the lower part, and it readily separates from the rest of the parietes, as it also does in 

 S. Benzoin. 



* Without pronouncing here upon the propriety of such separation, it may be remarked that the Slyracecc 

 certainly appear to be closely connected with the Symplocinece through Plerostyrax and Halesia ; and that a 

 diagnosis between the two groups, as limited by Mr. Miers, is not successfully based upon any one of his 

 differential characters, enumerated in Lindley's Vegetable Kingdom, p. 593, b. For, 1. A "tubular and 

 entirely free calyx " belongs merely to a part of the genus Slyrax, and not at all to Fleroslyrax and Halesia. 

 2. The same remark is true of " the valvate estivation of the petals." 3. "Their stamens being always 

 uniserial" does not exclude Barherina, in one species of which, moreover, they are only thrice the number 

 of the petals : in Halesia tetraplera the stamens are sometimes four times the number of the lobes of the 

 corolla. 4. " Linear anthers dorsally affixed to broad filaments nearly of their length," are not attribu- 

 table to Plerostyrax and Halesia, nor to some species of Slyrax. 5. The same objection applies to a 

 " superior ovary with three incomplete dissepiments " and " a free central placentation," which besides 

 are not true of PamphiUa ; and the ovules are as numerous in certain Symploces as in some Slyraccs. 



