green, smooth, a quarter of an inch long, truncate, with the border 
slightly pubescent, and bearing five minute teeth. Corotta of a 
rich vermillion, full two and a half inches long, slightly incurved 
the tube considerably longer than the calyx, then gradually swell- 
ing into a broad oblong throat, the limb oblique, two-lipped, the 
upper lip shortly two-cleft, the lower divided to the base, all the 
lobes oblong, obtuse, rolled back, and slightly downy at the margins 
and on the back, the tube is also very hairy inside at the part 
where the stamens are inserted. STamens exserted, but shorter than 
the lobes of the corolla, smooth, the fifth sterile stamen: very small 
and rudimentary. Ovary very short, linear, terete, placed on a thick, 
glandular disk. CapsuLEe only known by the coarse figure in the 
Flora Fiuminensis, where it is represented as oblong linear, marked 
on each side with three ribs. 
Poputar anp GeoarapuicaL Notice. The Bignoniacee, like all 
eee — have — very lately been known to botanists to any 
, as respects their systematic arrange- 
ment, thea are in a nats of great Setvaion, which, it is to be hoped, 
will at length be cleared up by De Candolle in the Prodromus, and in 
the special Monograph he is preparing. In a short historic review, 
published in the Bibliothéque de Geneve, that distinguished botanist 
states the number of species, now more or less known, to be 357, of 
which Linneus was cognizant of eighteen only. Of the above number 
300 are American, 21 African, 30 Asiatic, and 6 in the Archipelago, 
called by French geographers, Oceania. It is probable that these 
proportions would be slightly modified, were the vegetation of tropical. 
Africa better known ; but still America, and especially Brazil, will be 
found to produce by far the greatest number of species. It is also of 
that country that the species here figured is a native. 
_ This order is one of the strongest instances of the importance, for 
botanical purposes, of collecting the fruit as well as the flower. Of 
nearly one half of the known species the pod has not yet been observed, 
notwithstanding it is upon this organ that it is found necessary to lay 
the basis of the generic distribution, it being almost the only one 
capable of giving solid characters which harmonize with the general 
‘habit of the plants. The very first division adopted by De Candolle, 
rests entirely on the dehiscence or indehiscence of the fruit; the seeds 
in the former case, being surrounded by a membranous wing, whilst in 
the latter they are without any. These winged seeds are usually con- 
