OF KINGIA. 439 



reality much more nearly approaches to that of Dracoeiia 

 Draco, allowance bemji; made for tlie greater number, and 

 extreme narrowness of leaves, to which all the radiating [538 

 vessels belong.^ 



Obs. IL —I have placed Kingia in the natural order 

 Junceae along with Dasypogon, Calectasia and Xerotes, 

 genera peculiar to New Holland, and of which the two 

 former have hitherto been observed only, along with it, 

 on the shores of King George's Sound. 



The striking resemblance of Kingia, in caudex and 

 leaves, to Xanthorrhoea, cannot fail to suggest its affinity 

 to that genus also. Although this affinity is not con- 

 firmed by a minute comparison of the parts of fructifica- 

 tion, a sufficient agreement is still manifest to strengthen 

 the doubts formerly expressed of the importance of those 

 characters by which I attempted to define certain families, 

 of the great class Liliacese. 



In addition, however, to the difference in texture of 

 the outer coat of the seed, and in those other points, on 

 which I then chiefly depended in distinguishing Juncea? 

 from Asphodelea3, a more important character in Junceae 

 exists in the position of the embryo, whose radicle points 

 always to the base of the seed, the external umbilicus 

 being placed in the axis of the inner or ventral surface, 

 either immediately above the base as in Kingia, or 

 towards the middle, as in Xerotes. 



Obs. in. — On the structure of the Unimpregnated [5:?o 

 OvuLUM in Flicenogamous Plants. 



The description which I have given of the Ovnhnn of 

 Kingia, though essentially different from the accounts hi- 

 therto published of that organ before fecundation, in 



* My knowledge of this remarkable structure of Xantliorrhnca is chiefly 

 derived from specimens of the euudex of one of the larger s|)ecies of the genus, 

 brought from Port Jackson, and deposited in the collection at, the Jardin du 

 Koi of Paris by M. Gaudiciiaud, the very intelligent botanist who was attaelud 

 to Captain l)e Freycinct's voyage. 



