Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermacee. 265 
understand that these external alterations reach the internal 
tissue, the substances deposited in the cells, and even the embryo. 
Thus the young plant in the seed exists as a prisoner confined in 
asmall space. Physical and chemical causes separate the walls 
of the prison, rendering them flexible, penetrable, and sometimes 
transforming the encumbering matters into quid and nutritive 
substances. If these physical and chemical operations do not 
take place too slowly or too suddenly, if they do not tend to a 
putrid fermentation or to the carbonization of the tissues, if the 
materials of the albumen or the cotyledons are properly and 
suitably resolved, the young plant enlarges. Its nutrition had 
been trammelled, or almost suspended ; it is sono longer. This is 
the whole secret. Hence this phenomenon appears more easily 
understood in accordance with the ordinary laws of matter than 
numerous others relating to animal and vegetable life, although 
undoubtedly it is still very complicated and in part imperfectly 
understood. 
XXVIT.— On the Menispermacce. 
By Joun Mrurs, F.R.S., F.L.S. &e. 
[Continued from p. 138.] 
26. ANTIZOMA. 
Under this name I separated from Cissampelos, in 1851 (Ann. 
Nat. Hist. 2 ser. vii. 41), a small group of South-African plants 
possessing a very peculiar habit : two of them had been described 
by De Candolle,—one as Cissampelos calcarifera of Burchell, of 
which the male flower only was known; the other being the Cis- 
sampelos angustifolia of the same botanist, from a specimen of 
which I derived a knowledge of the female flower : to these, three 
other new species were then added. They are all small, erect 
shrubs, with somewhat the habit of Lyctum, having almost simple 
stems or subscandent branches. The leaves, unlike those of other 
Menispermacee, are linear, with extremely abbreviated petioles ; 
they are opake, thick, revolute on their margins, both surfaces 
being shagreened with extremely minute and crowded granula- 
tions. At each node, below the point of insertion of the petiole, 
there is a short, rigid and somewhat reflected spime—a feature 
peculiar to this genus, and quite singular in this family. The 
male inflorescence consists of one or two very short peduncles 
springing out of each axil, which bear on their summit from three 
to six minute flowers on short closely approximated pedicels ; 
these male flowers differ in no respect from those of Cissampelos. 
The inflorescence and the structure of the female flower are, 
however, very different: this I found in a unique specimen in 
