1074 



to the great Deodar. The height of these cypresses is most probably 

 more than 200 feet." 



Osseous I^yumen of Hyniencea Courharil. 



A paper by Dr. Seller, intituled ' Notice of the Osseous Legumen 

 of the Hymenaea Courbaril,' was read. 



"The osseous indehiscent legumen of the Hymenaea Courbaril, now 

 exhibited, attracted more notice from the tirst writers on Carpology 

 than it obtains from those of recent date. As a mere cabinet curio- 

 sity, it became prized at no long period after the discovery of Ame- 

 rica. It is supposed to be referred to by Oviedo, the contemporary 

 of Columbus, and the earliest author on the Natural History of the 

 New World. 



"In 1585, this legumen was sent, as a curiosity, to De TEcluse, then 

 Director of the Botanic Garden at Vienna, by John Garetus, an apo- 

 thecary of London. De I'Ecluse, or Clusius, the name by which his 

 fame is perpetuated in the genus Clusia, and the natural family Clu- 

 siaceaj, has given, in his work on exotics, published after he became 

 Professor of Botany at Leyden, a good figure of this legumen, and a 

 distinct description of it, under the name of ' Lobus Wingandecaon,' 

 from the place whence it was supposed to have come. Clusius seems 

 to think that this pod had been brought to London by some of the 

 followers of Sir Walter Raleigh. 



" John Bauhin, in his ' Historia Plantarum Universalis,' refers to 

 the description given by Clusius, saying, he had been presented with 

 a specimen of this pod, by Frederic Duke of Wurtemburg, whose 

 physician he was at that time. He also gives a good figure of the 

 pod and seeds, along with the figure of a young plant, which, he says, 

 the Duke had caused to be raised from the seed. The leaves of this 

 young plant enable us to identify the pod, figured by Bauhin, with 

 that of the Hymenaea Courbaril. 



" In 1658, the ' Historia Naturalis Utriusque Indiae ' was published, 

 by Piso, or Pison, whose name is perpetuated in the genus Piso, of 

 the family Nyctagineae. Piso was a physician of Amsterdam, who 

 accompanied Prince Maurice to the New World. Piso gives a 

 description of the tree and the fruit, and figures the legumen, and a 

 branch. The flowers he could not obtain, owing to the great height 

 of the tree. He confirms the conjecture, long before entertained, that 

 this pod belongs to the tree affording the gum anime, now called the 

 resina animes. He calls the tree ' Jetaiba,' — a name seemingly derived 

 from what he gives as the Brazilian word for the gum animc, which is 



