12 Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermacez. 
commissures, upon which very slight swellings, representing 
the future ganglia, may barely be perceived. 
In the larvee of the Lobster, on the contrary, and in those of 
the Zoéa-form in which the abdomen is well developed, we see 
the double ganglionic chain from the very first, formed, as it 
will be subsequently, of six pairs of ganglia, already of consi- 
derable size, and bound together by the longitudinal commis- 
sure. Here, as in the thoracic portion of the central system, two 
pairs of nerves issue from each of the ganglia and from the 
cords by which they are connected. 
IV.—On the Menispermacee. 
By Joon Miers, F.R.S., F.L.S. &c. 
[Continued from vol. xvii. p. 270.] 
29. STEPHANIA. 
This genus, proposed by Loureiro in 1793 for two plants of 
Chinese origin, was for a long time wholly neglected ; at length 
it was acknowledged by botanists, and so far extended by some 
as to embrace Blume’s genus Clypea; others, on the contrary, 
under vague notions of its real characters, gave the preference 
to Clypea, and included in it all the species of Stephania. The 
authors of the ‘Flora Indica’ and of the ‘Genera Plantarum’ 
have united the two genera, on the authority of Prof. A. Gray, 
who placed little dependence on the constancy of their relative 
distinctions as I had defined them: his doubts arose from the 
examination of a plant considered by him to be identical with 
Cocculus Forsteri, DC., which had been referred to Stephania ; 
it appeared to him that its floral parts were sometimes 3-merous, 
at other times 4-merous, in the same specimen—an inference 
upon which I offered some remarks in speaking of Clypea (vol. xvi. 
p- 268). In all the instances examined by me, which are ex- 
tremely numerous, I have found, without exception, that the 
floral parts in the two genera are constantly different in number. 
Stephania in its ¢ flower las six sepals in two series, three 
smaller petals, and a 6-celled anther; while Clypea, as I have 
shown, has eight sepals in two series, four petals, and an 8- 
celled anther. In Stephania the 9 flower has three sepals, three 
petals, and a putamen with a remarkable perforation in the 
middle of its disciform condyle; while Clypea has four sepals, 
two petals, and a putamen with an imperforated condyle, as in 
Tleocarpus and Cissampelos. Many good characters also separate 
this genus from Homocnemia and Ileocarpus: although the latter 
has a similar number of sepals and petals, the imperforation of 
its condyle renders it distinct ; the former has four sepals and 
