appeared on the subject, he gave, in his second volume, a distribution 
much superior to any that had been proposed; and collecting all the 
specimens he had access to, he enumerated above 3700 species. Inde- 
pendently of the old characters derived from the flowers, he invariably 
attached great importance to the pod and seed, whenever known, and 
made great use of the foliage in many instances. Having also ob- 
served the germination of a large number of cultivated species, he 
introduced into his general characters the differences he had observed 
in this respect, and even founded on them some of his primary 
divisions. There is, however, the great inconvenience that these 
characters can only be ascertained by cultivation; and though in some 
instances they appear to correspond with very natural groups, yet in 
others, marked exceptions have been found, and the consequence has 
been the frequent separation of genera otherwise closely allied. This 
is especially the case with tropical Leguminose, of which but a small 
proportion was known, even at the time Decandolle wrote, but in most 
other respects the numerous recent discoveries appear to have con- 
‘firmed the views of that eminent botanist. One point, at least; is 
now fully established, the great importance of the pod and seed as 
compared with the flower and ovarium; and collectors, especially in 
tropical countries, cannot be too much impressed with the necessity of 
gathering the pods as nearly ripe as possible, and always accompany- 
ing them with branches and leaves, even when the season will not 
admit of obtaining the flowers also. 
The genus Cologania, which forms the subject of the present sith, 
contains five or six Mexican species, some of them common in that 
country and known to us for the last fourteen or fifteen years, and yet 
the pod had not, we believe, till now been observed. It has now been 
perfected and ripened in our greenhouses, and confirms what had 
already been presumed as to the affinities of the genus. It is most 
closely allied to the North American Amphicarpza, it appears even 
doubtful whether the Amphicarpza Pitcheri, recently published in 
Torrey and Gray’s Flora of North America, be not to that degree 
‘intermediate between the two as to require the uniting them into one. 
It is not known whether any Cologania produces the apetalous flowers, 
so remarkable in Amphicarpexa, but this is a circumstance which 
happens occasionally in so many Phaseolee of different genera as to 
shew it to be of no importance. Dumasia, an East Indian species, 
