THE PHYTOLOGIST. 



No. XIV. 



JULY, MDCCCXLII. 



Price Is. 



Art. LXXI. — Analytical Notice of the ' Transactions of the Linnean 

 Society of London^ vol. xviii. pt. 4. August, 1841. 



(Concluded from p. 72), 



Art. XXXIII. — A Monograph of the Genus Disporum. By David Don, 



Esq., Libr. L.S., Prof. Bot. King's Coll. Lond. 



The name of this genus, unaccompanied by a description, first ap- 

 peared in Mr. Salisbury's list of Petaloid Monocotyledons, published 

 in the first volume of the Horticultural Society's Transactions. The 

 chief characters of the genus were pointed out by Mr. Brown, " and 

 among others its binary ovula, which doubtless suggested to Salisbury 

 the name of Disporum.'''' No description of the genus appeared until 

 the publication of Mr. Don's 'Prodromus Florae Nepalensis,' in 1824, 

 where, to Salisbury's single species — Disp. puUum ixais^xvaiedifulvum 

 in the Prodromus, as well as in the report of the present paper in the 

 * Proceedings of the Linnean Society,' p. 45), two others are added, 

 namely, Disp. Pitsutum * and Disp. parviflorum.f 



" The characters of the genus consist in its campanulate perianthium, with the se- 

 pals produced into a short pouch or spur at the base, in the cells of its ovarium bearing 

 two [ascending] ovula, in its baccate pericarpium, and in its umbellate inflorescence. 

 These distinctions will be found to be common to all the Asiatic species hitherto im- 

 properly refeiTed by most botanists to Uvularia. * * This genus terminates the 

 series of the Melanthaceae, forming the transition from that family to the Smilaceae, 

 the chain of connexion between them being rendered complete by the intervention of 

 a new genus, of which Streptopus lanuginosus is the type." — p. 513. 



The normal Melanthaceae, principally North American plants, have 

 the floral organs " persistent, and the partial decomposition of the tri- 

 merous pericarpium is almost universal." From the author's remarks 

 on the three groups into which " the Melanthacea appear naturally to 

 divide themselves," we extract the following characters. 



*The Uvularia Pitsutu of Buchanan Hamilton, MSS.; Uv. umbellata, Wallich, 

 ' Asiatic Researches,' xiii. 379, Wal. Catalogue,' No. 5090 ; Streptopus peduncularis, 

 Smith, Rees' ' Cyclopcedia,' under Uvularia. 



t Uvularia parviflora, Wallich, 'Asiatic Researches,' xiii. 379. 



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