356 Mr. CoLEBRooKF, on Boswellia 



ripe seed in a cell have not hitherto been observed in either of 

 the described species. 



The remarkable character of nmltifid and intricately folded 

 cotyledons, which will be noticed, recurs in certain other plants 

 of the same natural order, and especially in one which it is my 

 purpose to describe in this essay, and which exhibits three-lobed 

 contortuplicate cotyledons. It was first delineated solely from 

 the flower ; the fruit not having ripened on the trees where I 

 observed the blossom. Dr. Wallich, having been more fortunate 

 than myself in this respect, has since furnished me with a par- 

 ticular description of the ripe fruit, and has proposed the name 

 of Biirsera sei^rata for my plant. I had taken it, while unac- 

 quainted with its fruit, for an Ailanthus. 



It certainly is akin to the Mnrignia of Coramerson, which 

 Lamarck introduced into the genus Burscra, witli the specific 

 name of obtuaifoUa* : and which his continuator Poiret in one 

 place remarks to have much affinity with Ga;rtner's Dammara, 

 and in another says it appears to be the same+. 



Gœrtner himself, identifying his plant, of which the specimen 

 was received from the Isle of INIauritius, with the Danwiara ni- 

 gra of Rumphius, indigenous in the Molucca Islands, remarked 

 its near affinity to Amyr/s, and thought it possibly a genuine 

 species of that genus |.. But it has the intricate foldings of the 

 cotyledons which are remarked in Bursera serrato. 



As the two genera of Amy ris and Bursera are at piesent con- 

 stituted, a botanist may well be still at a loss to which of them a 

 new plant of the family is to be referred. The variable features 

 of Bursera gummifera, and the early inaccurate descriptions of 

 it, have led systematic writers to assign an essential character to 

 the genus constructed on its type, which is very loose and uncer- 



* Encycl. il. 708. f Enc. Siipp. ii. -147 & S\'2. 



t Fruct. ei !Sevi. ii. 103. 



tain : 



