42 Mr. J. W. Howell on the Papaveraceae and CruciferK. 



ration or complete development of these parts from the ori- 

 ginal cellular and pulpy state has never taken place. But with 

 this explanation the word may still be retained, unless con- 

 nate should be considered less exceptionable. 



I have also assumed that ovula belong to the transformed 

 leaf or carpel, and are not derived from processes of the axis 

 united with it, as several eminent botanists have lately sup- 

 posed. That the placentae and ovula really belong to the car- 

 pel alone is at least manifest in all cases where stamina are 

 changed into pistilla. To such monstrosities I have long since 

 referred in my earliest observations on the type of the female 

 organ in phoenogamous plants*, and since more particularly 

 in my paper on Rafflesia f : the most remarkable instances al- 

 luded to in illustration of this point being Senipervivum tecto- 

 rum, Salix oleifolia and Cochlearia armoracia, in all of which 

 eveiy gradation between the perfect state of the anthera and 

 its transformation into a complete pistillum, is occasionally 

 found. 



XII. — On the Structure of the Capsule of Papaveraceae; 

 and on the Nature of the Stigma of Cruciferse. By J. W. 

 Howell, Esq., M.R.C.S. 



To the Editors of the Annals of Natural History. 



Gentlemen, 



In reference to your notes appended to my paper " On the 

 Structure of the Stigma of the Pajjaveraceae" &c. in your last 

 Number, wherein it would appear that I had been anticipated 

 by M. Kunth, * Flora Berolinensis,' published 1838, in the 

 description of the apparently anomalous relation of the parietal 

 placenta3 to the stigmatic rays — permit me to observe, that my 

 observations on this interesting subject were made in 1832. 



In respect to your statement that " those of Mr. Howell's 

 observations which relate to the opposition of stigmata to pla- 

 centae in Papaverace<s, and to the composition and cohesion 

 of stigmata, had already been published by Dr. Brown in his 

 account of Cyrtandracece in Horsfield's ^ Plantae Javanicae,' " 

 which work I have not yet seen, but have learned that it w^as | 



published in 1840 — ^justice to myself compels me to inform i 



you, that the paper I sent you was published verbatim in the 

 *Bath and Cheltenham Gazette' in October 1840, and was 

 sent for republication in the ' Annals,' from a conviction that 

 the subject was new, and worthy of a more extended circula- 

 tion than a local paper could ensure. # 



* In Linn. Soc. Trans., vol. xii. p. 89. f Ibid. vol. xiii. p. 212, note. "* 



