Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermace. 129 
oblong sepal, with a shorter petal attached to its claw, both fixed 
extrorsely at the base of a solitary ovary, which grows into a 
small fleshy drupe. The species are numerous and often difficult 
to determine; for, owing to the extreme simplicity of the floral 
parts and their minute size, they afford few discriminating cha- 
racters ; the principal differential features therefore rest chiefly on 
the habit of the plant, on the form of the leaves, the comparative 
leneth of the petiole, the point of its insertion, and on the in- 
florescence : these offer many good and constant characters. 
The authors of the ‘ Flora Indica’ (p. 200), in their attempt to 
determine the Indian species of Cissampelos, came to the extra- 
ordinary conclusion that all the Asiatic, most of the African, 
and nearly all those belonging to the New World constitute one 
single species, and they fix upon Cissampelos Pareira of Linneus, 
a native of the Antilles, as the representative of this common 
type. In their view it does not signify whether the leaves be deeply 
or only slightly peltate or whether the petiole be inserted on 
the margin of the blade—whether they be cordate, or otherwise ; 
let them be acute, round, or elongated, whether upon very long 
petioles or nearly sessile, however various be the form or extent 
of the inflorescence, whether bracts be present or absent—all these 
differences, which are regarded as of great specific importance 
-by botanists in general, are of no value whatever in their consi- 
deration. Such an unprecedented annihilation of about fifty dis- 
similar kinds of Cissampelos, which have long been recognized in 
various botanical works, and to which distinct characters have 
been assigned, ought to be viewed with distrust, in the absence 
of good reasons ; a repudiation of such vast extent, even on the part 
of botanists of deservedly high repute, will induce most botanists 
to pause before they assent to so sweeping a conclusion, and must 
diminish the reliance that would otherwise be placed in the value 
of their decisions where, as I have shown, they have endeavoured 
to nullify not only good species, but valid genera. Messrs. 
Bentham and Hooker, in their ‘Genera Plantarum,’ do not go 
quite the length of the authors of the ‘ Flora Indica’ in regard 
to Cissampelos ; but, as might be expected, they indorse their de- 
cision to a great extent; for they recognize only twelve species as 
belonging to tropical America, five African (including those of 
Antizoma in the number), and only another solitary species, 
which, according to their view, is widely distributed over the rest 
of the world, and known to botanists under names which they 
regard only as synonyms of Cissampelos Pareira. Wowever 
convenient this method may be for the easy determination and 
laconic description of plants, it tends to force back the science of 
botany to the state in which it existed in the time of Linnzus, 
when it was ruled that any diversified number of plants which re- 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. xvii. 
