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it seeds ; and as it grows on a clay soil, and to no great extent except 
in a wet season, the land should be effectually drained. 
November 15, 1853.—Thomas Bell, Esq., President, in the chair. 
On the Genus Hodgsonia. 
Read a uotice “On Hodgsonia, Hook. fil. et Thoms., a new and 
remarkable genus of Cucurbitacee.” By Dr. J. D. Hooker, F.R.S., 
F.L.S., &c., and Dr. Thomas Thomson, F.L.S., &c. 
A very remarkable plant, one of the handsomest and most curious 
of the whole natural Family, with the inflorescence and flower of 
Trichosanthes, but in fruit widely different from any of the extensive 
natural Order to which it belongs. It has been extremely well 
described by Roxburgh as a species of Trichosanthes, and was 
cultivated many years ago in the Calcutta Botanic Garden, where it 
is now lost. A figure of the female flower is also in the Museum of 
the India House. Root branching. Stem climbing for 80 to 100 feet, 
festooning lofty trees. Wood of very remarkable structure. The 
almost axillary conical bodies, referred to buds, but generally described 
as stipules, are most remarkable and deserve careful study. Flowers, 
very handsome, appear in May, and the fruit ripens in autumn and 
winter; female flowers are rare, and from being solitary, are less 
conspicuous than the males. Ovarium covered with small warts 
that project through the dense, almost velvety, rusty pubescence, 
1-celled, with three parietal placente that project into the axis, and 
clearly show the normal structure of Cucurbitaceous fruits to have a 
parietal placentation ; cavity of the ovarium filled with watery pulp, 
that hardens as the fruit advances to maturity and becomes of the 
consistency of a hard turnip, full of watery fluid that escapes in 
large drops when the fruit is pierced. Ovules suberect, in pairs, 
each pair collateral and at right angles to the radius of the ovary; 
of these the ovule next the axis ripens, and that next the cir- 
cumference of the ovary becomes accrete to the outer one and seldom 
ripens. This position and ceconomy of the ovules is quite unique 
in the order. Flower about 4 inches long; the limb 8 inches in 
diameter, inodorous ; fringes of the petals 5—6 inches long. Calyx 
with several deep brown polished tubercles or warts towards each 
