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XXXIII. A Monograph of the Genus Disporum. By David Don, Esq., 

 Libr. L.S., Prof. Bot. Kings Coll. Lond. 



Read November 19th, 1839. 



A O Mr. Brown is due the merit of liaving first pointed out the chief cha- 

 racters of this genus, and among others its binary ovula, which doubtless 

 suggested to Salisbury the name of Disporum, subsequently given to it by 

 that botanist in a list of Petaloid Monocotyledons, printed in the first volume 

 of the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London. The genus, 

 however, remained undescribed, and almost unnoticed, until the publication 

 of my little work on the plants of Nepal, in which I gave a detailed descrip- 

 tion of it, and added to it two other species, namely, the Uvularia Pitsutu of 

 Buchanan Hamilton, and the Uvularia parvijiora of Wallich. Sir J.E. Smith, 

 in an article appended to that on Uvularia, and inserted in the 30th volume 

 of Rees's Cyclopaedia, has referred the former plant to Michaux's, or rather 

 Richard's genus Streptopus, with the name of peduncularis. To this view of 

 its affinities he was most probably led by the account of the fruit given by 

 Buchanan Hamilton in his manuscript notes, for the specimen of the plant 

 from that learned botanist in the Smithian Herbarium is without fruit. The 

 characters of the genus consist in its campanulate perianthium, with the sepals 

 produced into a short pouch or spur at the base, in the cells of its ovarium 

 bearing two ovula, in its baccate pericarpium, and in its umbellate inflo- 

 rescence. These distinctions will be found to be common to all the Asiatic 

 species hitherto improperly referred by most botanists to Uvularia. As Di- 

 sporum is as yet but imperfectly known, having been adopted in few systematic 

 works, and as the species, now amounting to ten, are mostly undescribed, it 

 occurred to me that a complete account of the genus might not prove unac- 

 ceptable to the Linnean Society. 



This genus terminates the series of the Melanthacece, forming the transition 



