16 Mr. J. Miers on the Menispermacee, 
it grows into a very slender elongated tube within the cell of 
the ovary, gradually extending itself till it completes a circle, 
and that at that point, meeting with obstruction, it would be 
turned aside and carried forward in an inward spiral coil for 
nearly two other gyrations, terminating in the centre: in this 
- case the entire coiling tube ought to be free; but we see the 
reverse; for its adjacent sides are found agglutinated together 
and also with the interposing spiral condyle, which has simul- 
taneously accompanied it in its growth. By what means this is 
accomplished appears ay enigma very difficult of explanation. 
The only species of Spirospermum is a tree of low stature, or 
a shrub with pendent branches charged with large, lanceolate- 
oblong, coriaceous, polished, glabrous leaves, with many parallel 
oblique nerves, which anastomose near the margin; the petiole 
is short and stout; the inflorescence is a terminal panicle, twice 
the length of the leaves, pendent, and, with the fruit, becomes 
black in drying; it is copiously branched, its ultimate branches 
bearing, in the ¢ plant, two long fructiferous pedicels, swollen 
at their summit into a receptacle, which carries nine crowded 
stipitate drupes, all being glabrous, bractless, and black. The 
drupes are exsiccous, orbicular, extremely compressed, acutely 
carinated on the margin, on which, close to the base, is seen the 
remnant of the persistent style, and on each flattened face, near 
the carinated margin, is a prominent ring: the putamen is thin 
and coriaceous, quite flat and discoid in the centre of each face, 
where it is marked by a spiral furrow corresponding with the 
line of condyle already described. 
In the g plant the inflorescence is in axillary panicles, which 
are as long as the leaves, having a slender rachis provided at each 
of its alternate axils with two slender branches of unequal length, 
all dichotomously divided, the ultimate branchlets bearing two 
equal 1-flowered pedicels, all quite glabrous. The flowers are 
small, consisting of :—six obovate sepals, in two series, the three 
inner being twice the length of the three outer ones; six equal 
oblong petals, one-third the length of the inner sepals, having 
their lateral margins inflected; six stamens, in two series, the 
length of the petals, the three outer ones free, with slender fila- 
ments, the three inner filaments being united for half their ~ 
length into a monadelphous column ; each stamen provided with 
two free, distinct, erect anther-lobes. | 
SprrosPeRMUM, Thouars.—Flores dioici, ubique glabri. Mase. 
Sepala 6, biseriata, obovata, fusco-nigrescentia, quorum 8 
‘interiora duplo majora. Petala 6, biseriata, eequalia, oblonga, 
sepalis interioribus 3-plo brevioribus, lateribus inflexis. Sta- 
mina 6, biseriata, petalis equilonga; filamenta filiformia, 
