312 Miscellaneous. 



quills and tail deep brown ; bill yellow ; the feet lead-colour, and 

 the membrane that borders the toes yellow. 



Total length, 20 inches ; bill, 2 inches and 2 lines ; wing, 10 inches ; 

 tarsi, 1 inch and 10 lines. 



It differs from the typical Podica in having a portion of the lores 

 naked, in the greater breadth of the tail-feathers, and in their being 

 rather rigid. 



The only specimen I have seen, from which this description and the 

 drawing have been made, was presented to the British Museum by 

 the Right Hon. the Earl of Ellenborough. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



On Polycotyledonous Embryos. By M. P. Duchartre. 



Since Jussieu, by a happy application of a principle first asserted 

 by Ray, has taken the characters furnished by the embryo for the 

 basis of the great divisions of the vegetable kingdom, all the ques- 

 tions relating thereto have become highly important. The first of 

 these characters is that deduced from the number of the cotyledons, 

 according to which all embryonal plants have been divided into mo- 

 nocotyledons and dicotyledons. This number is nearly always, in 

 fact, one or two ; but according to the majority of botanists, it 

 exceeds two in the embryo of a small number of plants to which the 

 denomination of polycotyledonous has been applied. By a remark- 

 able peculiarity these plants are distributed among several families 

 and also genera of which the majority of species have the more fre- 

 quently but two cotyledons ; whence it has been considered impossible 

 to establish for them a special class. The object of this memoir is 

 to examine if these plants are really provided with several distinct 

 cotyledons, or have only two which are deeply divided into a variable 

 number of lobes. 



I first show by several examples that the cotyledons, or the seminal 

 leaves of the dicotyledonous plants, have a very marked tendency to 

 divide on their median line, in various degrees, sometimes so deeply 

 as to cause each cotyledonous lobe to be wrongly considered as 

 constituting a distinct cotyledon. Amongst other facts, I have de- 

 scribed and figured germinating plants of Dianthus chinensis, Linn., 

 which show all the degrees of division from the slit of one of tlie 

 seminal leaves to the complete division of each one of the two into 

 two nearly independent lobes. I also show by a series of different 

 states, that the embryo of the Macleya owes to a division of its 

 cotyledons the remarkable appearance which has caused it to be de- 

 scribed as possessing sometimes from three to four cotyledons. I 

 nevertheless observe that, in some very rare cases, the binary whorl 

 of cotyledons may become ternary ; of which examples are enume- 

 rated. 



I then pass to those embryos the cotyledons of which are normally 

 bipartite, and describe the development of that of Amsinkia and their 

 germination. I show that the two cotyledons of tliese plants, sim- 



