THYMELMACE^. 108 



anther -with wHch it is surmounted to be partly or wholly 

 exserted. The latter is formed of a connecti?-e continuous with the 

 summit of the filament and to the internal face of which are applied 

 throughout their entire length the parallel and independent cells 

 of the anther, dehiscing introrsely by a longitudinal cleft. With the 

 stamens alternate ten or twelve obtuse or flattened tongues which 

 occupy the intervals i and are covered with whitish hairs. At the 

 bottom of the floral receptacle is inserted a sessile gynsecium, the 

 ovary of which, generally dicarpellar ^, is surmounted by a short 

 style, dilated above to a stigmatiferous head with more or less salient 

 lobes. The ovary is divided into two cells, complete or incomplete,' 

 each of which encloses, in its internal angle, a descending anatropous 

 ovule, with micropyle directed upwards and outwards.* The fruit is 

 a drupe, but slightly fleshy, finally dry or nearly so, obovate or 

 obcordate, attenuated at base to a sort of foot around which per- 

 sist the perianth, and a portion of the androeoium ; compressed per- 

 pendicularly to the partition which divides it into two cells. It opens 

 marginally into two valves, septiferous in the middle of their internal 

 face, and encloses one or two seeds the coats ^ of which are prolonged 

 inferiorly to a sort of chalazine horn ® and cover a fleshy embryo, 

 with short superior radicle and thick plano-convex cotyledons. Of 

 one species of Aquilaria from the Philippines a genus Gyrinofsis'' 

 has been made, because it has a receptacular sac longer in tube 

 and very short staminal filaments. Aquilaria comprises trees and 

 shrubs from tropical Asia and the warmest regions of Malaya. They 

 have alternate leaves, entire or nearly so, penninerved, with 

 numerous secondary nervures, linear and parallel, and terminal 

 lateral or axillary flowers,^ arranged in simple or more or less com- 

 pound umbels. Four or five species are described.^ 



' Wlile the sepals are reflexed. ' The exterior is crustaceons, hlaokish, often 



^ Here and there with three carpels. covered with small salient scales. 



' They have always appeared to me com- ° The prolonged external coat envelopes this 



plete, though the separating partition is formed conical projection. When it decays (which 



of two halves meeting along the middle line happens sooner or later), it lays hare a bundle 



with margins tolerably thick, but not imiting of long hairs, originally planted on the chala- 



and easily separable with the slightest traction. zaic region, afterwards disengaged, but pre- 



Always in Lachnolepis (Mia. Arm. Mus. Lugd. viously united in a brush in this kind of sheath 



Bat. i. 132), to us unknown, but apparently which keeps them together 



ought not, for this single character, to be sepa- ' Done. Ann. 8c. Nat. sfir. 2, xix. 41, 1. 1 B.— 



rated from the other Gyrinops, the two parietal Meissn. Frodr. 602. ^ 



placentae remaining, it is said, but slightly ' Greenish or reddish, 



galient. ' Spkeng. Si/st. ii. 356.— EoxB. et Colebb. 



* with double envelope. Tram. Linn. Soo. xxi. iii. 119, t. 21.— Koxb. 



