132 



NATURAL HISTORY OF PLANTS. 



only as sections : Anosmia, from Crete, having a small fruit, with a 

 variable number of vittse sometimes a single one in each furrow ; 

 Smyrniopsis, from the Levant, whose fruit has mericarps much less 

 incurved from base to summit, marginal ridges more developed and 



Smyrnium Olusatrum. 



Fig. 142. Fruit (\). 



Fig. 143. Trans, sect, of 

 mericarp. 



Fig. 144. Long. sect, of 

 mericarp. 



one or two vittae in each furrow ; Eleutherospermum, from the same 

 country, whose fruit is more elongate, with five prominent and 

 sharper ridges to each mericarp, and generally three relatively more 

 superficial vittae in each furrow ; Eulophis, American, having a more 

 elongate fruit with a variable number of (but not solitary) vittae in 

 each furrow, and a more involute seed than the true Smyrnium. 



Conium (fig. 145-148) consists of glabrous dicarpous herbs, having 

 compound umbels, with involucres and involucels formed of a variable 

 number of bracts, petals more or less unequal, and stylopods in form 

 of very depressed cones. The fruit is short ovoid, somewhat com- 

 pressed perpendicular to the partition and there hollow. The five 

 primary ridges of each mericarp are nearly equal and tolerably pro- 

 minent, with a transverse section in form of an isosceles triangle, and 

 smooth or more generally crenelately undulate. The vittae are nil or 

 rudimentary, and the very fine and irregular coloured lines borne by 

 the fruit are of quite a different nature. The carpophore, described as 

 undivided, sometimes separates into two. Of the two species of 

 Conium known, one is very common throughout the northern hemi- 

 sphere of our world; the other belongs to the east and south of 

 Africa. With this we can connect as a section only, Vicatia, a 



