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324 . MR. J. MIERS ON THE HIPPOCRATEACEÆ OF SOUTH AMERICA. 
about four large nuciform seeds, with a hard coriaceous testa, carinated and stipitated as 
in the instances last mentioned; the embryo is also exalbuminous, with oval, thick, 
fleshy cotyledons, and a small inferior radicle. 
There are several modifications of drupaceous fruits, resulting from the prolongation of 
the axis of the ovary commensurately with the growth of its cells; these fruits are either 
small or extremely large, generally of an oval shape, with an indehiscent pericarp, which 
is very thick and ligneous or thinly testaceous, or else enlarged by a thick, soft, edible 
mesocarp; they are 3-celled, or at times unilocular by the abortion of two of their cells, 
or by the partial evanescence of the dissepiments: they contain few or more seeds, which 
are sometimes very large, of an oval or oblong shape, without any alar or stipitate sup- 
port; they have a hard, thiek coriaceous testa, marked near the radicular extremity 
with a small hilum ; in this testa the raphe may always be traced under the form of a 
loriform simple cord, proceeding from the hilum to the opposite extremity; or else, 
starting from the hilum, it becomes indefinitely ramified over the entire extent, and im- 
bedded in the thick integument, ultimately appearing as a network of crowded, white, 
spiral filaments. In some cases this testa is covered with a white fleshy coating, like 
that which I formerly described as an arilline*, and which ultimately forms a sparse 
pulp, in which the seeds are embedded. "The embryo in all' these cases has no albumen, 
and consists of two (rarely three) cotyledons, which are generally very large, always 
thick and fleshy, with a small radicle more or less included between them, near the 
hilum, its position being more or less centripetal towards the axis of the fruit, and by 
mutual pressure removed from the original points of attachment of the ovules. 
These different modifications in the fruit afford good generic characters in Tontelea, 
Raddia, Clercia, Kippistia, and some others; but it sometimes happens, as in Peritassa, 
that the fruit, of a depressed globular form, with a thin, subtestaceous, indehiscent peri- 
carp, contains six equal, ovoid, subangular seeds, placed uniserially and vertically around 
the axis, without any intervening pulp, or, if any, now evanescent, the dissepiments 
having become obliterated. ln its flower, the ovary is 3-celled, each cell containing two 
ovules, collaterally suspended from its summit; accordingly in the fruit we find six 
seeds as above mentioned, with a small hilar cicatrix on the top of the ventral angle: 
they have a thick, coriaceous testa, and an adherent inner integument, with a close 
araneoid network of white spiral fibres embedded in their substance: these coatings 
enclose an embryo, without albumen, having two, sometimes three fleshy cotyledons, 
united together at the summit by a minute, mammeeform, superior radicle, in the vertex, 
near the hilum: this is contrary to the usual position of the radicle in this family; 
but we have it repeated in Sarcocampsa. In Cheiloclinium we find a fruit with six seeds 
under a different arrangement: it is of an oblong form, with a hard coriaceous pericarp, 
which is 3-celled ; each cell contains two superposed seeds, one erect, the other suspended, 
both attached near the middle of an almost obliterated axis: in the upper one the minute 
radicle is inferior, near the hilum, while the lower one has a superior radicle, also near the 
hilum, both having two very fleshy cotyledons, without albumen. Here it is to be 
remarked that not only the seminal integument, but the fleshy cotyledons are filled with 
* Linn, Trans. xxii. 89; Contrib. Bot. i. 211; ibid, ii, 133; Ann. Nat. Hist. 3rd ser. iv. 26; ibid. ix. 291, 
