U NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



which we have been able to study have only one carpel at all ages, 

 while in the other types, whose fruit is unicarpellary when 

 adult, there was a larger number of carpels at some earlier period. 

 4. The state of the interior surface of the pericarp : this is covered 

 with peculiar hairs in C nest is, but remains glabrous in the neigh- 

 bouring genera Cnestidium and Tceniochlcena. As regards the per- 

 sistence or precocious fall of the calyx, the degree of closeness with 

 which it embraces the base of the fruit, the presence or absence of 

 an aril — in our eyes these characters are not even of generic value, 

 inconstant as they are; in certain genera which our predecessors 

 have regarded as perfectly homogeneous. Thus several authors have 

 held Rourea generically distinct from Byrsoearpus and Bernardinia, 

 in that its calyx persists, closely applied to the base of the fruit, 

 while in the other two it diverges from it, even falling off after 

 anthesis in Bernardinia. But we have shown 1 that "in the series of 

 species from Madagascar we find every transition from the Senegal 

 species of Byrsocarpus with spreading sepals, and those of the mimo- 

 soid Roureas from tropical Africa in which the appressed calyx is 

 most marked. . . In fact this is only a question of degree, so that 

 " it is impossible to lay down the law, at what point in this series of 

 species the calyx ceases to be that of a Byrsocarpus, and becomes 

 that of a true Rourea" The non-persistent calyx of Bernardinia is 

 equally insufficient to make it a distinct genus from Rourea, for in 

 the genus Connarus itself, species with persistent sepals, are united 

 to others with caducous sepals, without our being able to use these 

 differences to found even distinct sections ; these two characters can 

 then afford no acceptable generic distinctions. This will not apply 

 to the accrescence of the calyx, for it is sufficient to separate Rourea 

 and Connarus, which genera we have already seen are perfectly dis- 

 tinguished by another character. 



Connaracece are distributed- over no wide zone of latitude, but are 

 found under almost every degree of longitude in all the warm regions 

 of the globe. Not one species it is true has been found in tropical 

 Australia, and only one in the Islands of the Pacific. But the 

 hundred and fifty described species are nearly equally distributed 

 over the whole of the warm districts of Asia, Africa, and tropical 



1 Adansonia, vi. 228 (see above, p. 5, note 3). - Lindl., Teg. Kinyd., [68. 



