the same breadth, cupshaped, glabrous, truncate with the margin entire, 
and clothed internally with velvety brown tomentum, except near the 
base which is also paler. Prrats five, about four inches long, and 
apparently somewhat coriaceous, linear-oblong, very slightly con- 
nected together at the base and to the staminiferous tube ; whitish 
inside and tomentose more than half way down; on the outside densely 
covered with minute fascicled short and dark brown hair, the fascicles 
arranged in interrupted subconfluent transversely waved lines; a near- 
ly obsolete channel runs down the middle of the back. Tuner formed 
by the stamens an inch and a half long, fleshy, with the orifice appar- 
ently sinuate or obscurely lobed. Numerous white filaments spring 
from the extremity and outside of the tube, over a surface of about one 
quarter of an inch. FitamMents two and a half inches long, forked 
above the middle, each branch bearing a reniform one-celled anther, 
placed transversely. Pox.en of trigonal vesicles intermixed with 
waxy matter. Ovary ovato-oblong, pentangular, with five spurious (?) 
cells, and containing numerous ovules arranged in two lines along 
each of their innermost angles. SvtyLe more than three inches and a 
half, filiform, reddish towards the apex. Stiema minutely five lobed. 
N.B. This description is drawn up from an examination of the dried 
flower and leaf, from which, whilst fresh, the drawing was made. 
J. S. HENSLow. 
Poputar aND GeograpHicaL Notice. This genus is confined 
to the West Indies and other parts of tropical America; and the few 
species which it includes are all handsome trees with large flowers. 
It is closely allied to the genus Adansonia, found in Senegal, and which 
is celebrated for containing the thickest and oldest trees which have 
hitherto been discovered. As it is unlikely that we shall ever obtain 
flowering specimens of this “oldest organic monument of our planet” 
as Humboldt calls it, some notice here, of so extraordinary a produc- 
tion may not be uninteresting to our readers. We copy the substance 
of the following observations from the first volume of Don’s System of 
Gardening and Botany. Michael Adanson, the celebrated French 
naturalist, after whom the genus was named, measured several of these 
trees growing in Africa. They were from 65 to 78 feet in cireumfer- 
ence, but very low in proportion. The trunks were from 12 to 15 feet 
high before they divided into many horizontal branches, which touch- 
ed the ground at their extremities; these were from 45 to 55 feet long, 
* 
