14 Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermacee. 
nosis, crassis, accumbentibus, curvatis, radicula minima su- 
pera ad styli vestigium spectante multoties longioribus. 
Frutices Asiatici, forsan scandentes ; ramuli pubescentes, demum 
glabri, cupuloso-nodosi; azillis approximatis; folia oblonga 
vel oblongo-lanceolata, glaberrima, nervis impari-pinnatis ; pe- 
tiolo subbrevi, imo apiceque subtumidulo : pedicelli g aaxillares, 
plurimi, fasciculati, gracillimi, 1-flori, internodiis sepius equi- 
longi; 9 axillares, pauciores, crassiores, 1-flori; drupe sub- 
globose. 
Descriptions of the following species will be found in the 
third volume of my ‘ Contributions to Botany :’-— 
1. Antitaxis fasciculata, nob.—In peninsula Malayana: ». s. 
in herb. Hook. et meo 3, Malacca (Griffiths). 
2. cauliflora, nob.—In Java: v. s. in herb. Mus. Brit., 
Java, ? (Horsfield, 3 et 4). . 
5. — lucida, nob.;—Cocculus lucidus, Teysen e¢ Bennings, 
Nat. Tijdsch. iv. 397.—In Java: v.s. in herb. Hook. 2 in 
hort. Bogor. cult. (T. Anderson). 
4. ——- longifolia, nob. ;—Cocculus longifolius, DC. MS.—In 
insula Timor: v.s. in herb. Mus. Paris. 
52. SprrosPERMUM. 
This genus was founded, in 1806, upon a Madagascar plant, 
by Du Petit-Thouars, who gave a very meagre deseription of it. 
De Candolle, in 1818, arranged the genus in Menispermacee, in 
his ‘Systema,’ comprising all the details afforded by Thouars 
within the space of six lines, and that is all we know of the plant 
since that time. In my prefatory remarks on this order (Aw. 
op. 3 ser. xill. 125), not having then seen the plant, I exeluded 
the genus from the family, on account of the spiral form of its 
embryo, and upon the following grounds. In every instance 
throughout the Menispermacee I had found the embryo always 
more or less incurved, the degree of its curvature invariably 
corresponding with the extent of excentric growth of the ovary 
and fruit, the cotyledonary end of the embryo being seen inva- 
riably in close proximity to the basal point of attachment of the 
fruit, while the radicular extremity as constantly points to the 
vestige of the deflected style, the latter being generally drawn 
down near to the basal point of attachment: hence, in the most 
extreme cases, the embryo never completes an entire circle ; and 
from the constancy of this feature, it was naturally inferred that 
a spiral embryo could not occur in Menispermacee. A sub- 
sequent examination of the seed convinced me that I was quite 
mistaken in this conclusion, and that Spirospermum offers a very 
