10 Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermaceae. 



obtained. The embryo is of a very diiBferent and very peculiar 

 form in all the Heterocliniea, where the cotyledons are extremely 

 thin, foliaceous, and present the singular anomaly of being 

 widely and divaricately spread on a plane parallel with the ex- 

 ternal face. 



When, after careful study, I first attempted to classify the 

 Menispermacece, it became manifest, from the foregoing evidence, 

 that the floral parts, always of diminutive size, were little adapted 

 for this purpose ; but by adopting as a basis the development of 

 the fruit, it was easy to establish several valid and well-defined 

 groups. An interval of nearly sixteen years has tended to con- 

 firm this conviction; and accordingly the same arrangement 

 which I formerly adopted is here repeated, with some modifica- 

 tions, by dividing the family into seven well-marked tribes, in 

 the following manner : — 



Tribe 1. Heteroclinie^. The putamen here is generally 

 osseous, rarely chartaceous, somewhat compressed antically and 

 postically, 1-locular, with an internal umboniform or globular 

 condylus in the middle of its ventral face, which is often divided 

 into two chambers by a partition, to which the more or less 

 meniscus-shaped seed is attached in the manner before men- 

 tioned, the line of the raphe with a portion of the integuments 

 being drawn into this partition, from which it is difficult to 

 detach it. But sometimes the condyle entirely vanishes in a 

 mere umboniform depression of the ventral face of the nut, cor- 

 respondingly convex within the cell, the seed being suspended 

 from near its summit by a mere point or extremity of the raphe 

 which is seen continuous upon the free integument, running 

 down its ventral face : this modification occurs in Calycocarpum, 

 Jateorhiza, Fibraurea, Paraba'na, Aspidocarya, and Odontocarya. 

 It should be mentioned, as a general character of the tribe, that 

 the remnant of the style is always seen near the summit of the 

 drupe, or comparatively little removed from it. The embryo is 

 consequently nearly orthotropous, with large foliaceous coty- 

 ledons placed laterally and divaricately on the same plane, and 

 imbedded in distinct cells of the albumen, which is thin and 

 homogeneous on the dorsal side, always thicker on the ventral 

 portion, which latter is most frequently deeply cleft or ruminated 

 by numerous fissures, as in Anona, the radicle being short, 

 terete,* and superior. 



Tribe 2. Anomosperme^. Here the style is on the apparent 

 summit of the drupe, whose stipitate support is on one side of 

 the longer diameter of the fruit, so that the style is more or less 

 excentric to the real base of the drupe, which, properly speak- 

 ing, is transversely or obliquely oval and gibbous. The putamen 

 is coriaceous, and the seed is quite cylindrical and straight for 



