Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermacez. 269 
cimens, now in the British Museum, collected by Forster and 
Solander. Additional evidence of the tetramerous or dimerous 
structure in Clypea is afforded by the structure of its 9 flowers, 
which Dr. Gray does not appear to have seen: these have each 
four sepals, two petals, and one ovary, with two stigmata, each 
bifid *; while Stephania has three sepals, three petals, and an 
ovary with three or six stigmata. We have also a different 
development of the putamen in Clypea, where the hippocrepical 
ring that forms the seminal cell has externally upon each face a 
single series of centrifugal spines, which stand out beyond the 
flattened edge that forms the periphery of the cell; whereas in 
Stephania there is a double series of tubercles on each side ; 
moreover in Clypea the condyle is a plane or slightly concave 
entire disk, which is not perforated in the middle, the latter 
character being peculiar to Stephania. I have found these cha- 
racters constant in all the six species here enumerated ; so that 
we have sufficient evidence upon which the right of Clypea to 
rank as a distinct and good genus can be maintained, 
All the plants of Clypea have deeply peltate leaves, as in Ste- 
phania and Cissampelos. The inflorescence is dichotomously 
branched, or more frequently simply or repeatedly umbellate, as 
in Stephania; but very often, as Just stated, the ultimate rays 
and pedicels become confluent into a disciform tumescence at 
the summit of the umbel, on which the flowers are sessile and 
closely aggregated into a subglobular head—a circumstance 
which probably suggested the name of Clypea, as this aggluti- 
nation is very conspicuous in Blume’s typical species, C. acumt- 
natissima. When the plants and flowers are pubescent, the 
hairs are all articulated. 
Cryrra, Blume.—Flores dioici. Mase. Sepala 8, biseriata, spa- 
thulato-oblonga, apice rotundata vel truncata, lateribus inter- 
dum undulatis, seepe pilis articulatis extus vestita, sestivatione 
closely compacted upon the fleshy disk, that it is almost impracticable to 
separate them without confounding some parts of one with those of an- 
other; the only sure mode of analysis is therefore to count the whole 
number of parts in one capitulum, and take their average. In other spe- 
cies (for instance, in C. oryphylia), where the flowers are approximated 
(not agglutinated together), and therefore easily separable, the floral parts 
are constantly and unquestionably tetramerous. 
* In the 2 inflorescence of C. Forsteri, the flowers are agglutinated to- 
gether upon a fleshy mass, as in the 3; so that it is equally necessary to 
analyze the whole capitulum as if it were a single flower. In this way I 
found in a single ? head fourteen ovaries and eighty-four floral scales, 
of which one-third were smaller and darker than the remaining more 
membranous two-thirds, which gives four sepals and two petals to each 
ovary. 
