462 MR. JOHN MIERS ON A NEW GENUS OF THE BURMANNIACER. 
sides narrowing into an obtuse point, and truncated at the opposite end, the angles of 
which are prolonged into two erect horn-like appendages of equal length; and from a 
point between these it is attached to and suspended from the end of the filament. These 
stamens at first converge towards the axis, over the stigma, but ultimately they collapse 
into a pendent position, the anthers being fixed extrorsely, and turned towards the face 
of the perianth. The anther consists of two distinct, oblong, parallel or slightly con- 
verging lobes, each bilocellate, dorsally adnate to the connective, and opening bivalvately 
by a median longitudinal suture, the margins of which detach themselves from the sep- 
tum. In the flowers examined, the anther-cells had discharged their pollen; but some 
few of the granules still remained in the cells, while others were distributed over the 
surface of the perianth. These pollen-grains are somewhat large (0:003 in. in diam.), 
globular, extremely transparent, and of a very pale hue, with a minutely reticulated sur- 
face, and three slight hyaline protuberances on the margin; but these protuberances are 
not lengthened into boyaux as in Diclyostega; the pollen is therefore quite of the ordi- 
nary structure. 
The ovarium is wholly inferior, turbinate in form, 1-celled, with three parietal placenta, 
as in Ophiomeris ; it is crowned by a convex fleshy epigynous disk, from the centre of 
which the somewhat short cylindrical style rises, bearing the stigma, which is equal to it 
in length, suddenly incrassated, and cleft almost to its base into three nearly erect lobes 
with minutely papillose surfaces, their summit scarcely reaching the middle of the tube. 
The fleshy hyaline capsule grows to a size four times that of the ovary, and in conse- 
quence of the fall of the perianth at the period of maturity, by a circumscissile line of 
separation along the margin of the epigynous disk, it remains like an open-mouthed trun- 
cated turbinate cup; it has three short parietal placentze, which do not meet in the base, 
and rise to the height of one-fourth of the length of the cup; they are as broad as the 
intervening spaces, and are densely covered with very numerous minute seeds upon 
long funicles, all forming a crowded mass in the bottom of the cell. 
These minute seeds, though similar in form, are somewhat larger than those of Ophio- 
meris, being 0-05 in. long and 0-02 in. broad; they are suspended by a rather long 
funicle: the outer tunic is very lax and transparent, as in Burmannia, with about twelve 
longitudinal carinated ribs, which are parallel and uninterrupted, arcuately conjoined at 
the apex, where they terminate in a wide, open, truncated mouth; below they are co" 
nected with the somewhat narrower hemispherical reticulated and translucent base of 
the integument : the spaces between the longitudinal ribs consist each of a single narrow 
areole, filled with a pellicular membrane which, under a powerful microscope, is 
marked by numerous closely parallel, very diagonal lines, slanting obliquely downw®™ 
from left to right; and the ribs themselves are fissile down their middle through i 
entire length, "The funicle by which the seed is suspended is 0-04 in. long, with a dite 
meter of 0:0055 in.; it is transparently hyaline, forming an extremely thin pellieult 
hollow eylinder, marked by six or eight very delicate lines, which extend in an ai 
ruptedly parallel direction from one extremity to the other, the interspaces being streak : 
by elose transverse lines so extremely minute that they can be discerned only under 
very powerful microscope : thus magnified, these interspaces assume the appearance 
