22 ON THE PROTEACE.E OE JUSSIEU. 



advantage referred to that which he has termed Akenium ; 

 but as I am unwilling in the present paper to adopt any term 

 not more generally sanctioned and understood than this, I 

 shall content myself with calling those nuces, which are 

 either not at all or but slightly compressed and not bor- 

 dered ; and apply the term samara to such as are either 

 very much compressed, or with a less remarkable com- 

 pression are surrounded or terminated by a membranaceous 

 border: that I regard these distinctions however as in 

 some cases of very little importance, may be inferred from 

 this, that my genus Leucadendron includes both these kinds 

 of fruit. 



The first observation I have to offer on the fruits of 

 Proteaceae is, that there is no really bivalvular capsule in 

 the order ; a truth which was not perceived by Gsertner in 

 35] describing his Banksia dactijhides (the Concilium dac- 

 tyloides of Dr. Smith), and which has equally escaped 

 Cavanilles and Labillardiere in their characters of Hakea, 

 Dr. Smith has more cautiously omitted this consideration 

 in his character of that genus, and Professor Schrader has 

 accurately described the suture as only existing on one 

 side : such fruits then are as trulv folliculi as those of 

 Grevil/ea, B/wjiala, or Embothrium ; and that the existence 

 of a distinct placenta is by no means necessary to con- 

 stitute this kind of fruit, is proved even by some genera of 

 Apocineae, to wdiich family this term was first applied. 



A circumstance occurs in some species of Persoonia to 

 which I have met with nothing similar in any other plant : 

 the ovarium in this genus, whether it contain one or two 

 ovula, has never more than one cell ; but in several of the 

 two-seeded species a cellular substance is after fcecundation 

 interposed between the ovula ; and this gradually indurat- 

 ing acquires in the ripe fruit the same consistence as the 

 putamen itself, from whose substance it cannot be distin- 

 guished ; and thus a fruit originally of one cell becomes 

 bilocular : the cells however are not parallel, as in all those 

 cases where they exist in the unimpregnated ovarium, but 

 diverge more or less upwards. 



In all the seeds of this order there is a very manifest 



