718 SHORT CONTRIBUTIONS TO VARIOUS WORKS, 



the seeds of the modern Pandanus. As this position of 

 the seeds upon footstalks, composed of long rigid fibres, 

 at a distance from the receptacle, is a character that exists 

 in no other family than the Pandanecs, we are hereby 

 enabled to connect our fossil fruit with this remarkable 

 tribe of plants, as a new genus, Podocarya. I owe the 

 suggestion of this name, and much of my information on 

 this subject, to the kindness of my friend, Mr. Robert 

 Brown. 



The large spherical fruit of Pandanus, hanging on its 

 parent tree, is represented at pi. Ixxxiv, fig. 1 . Fig. 11 is the 

 summit of one of the many drupes into which this fruit is 

 usually divided. Each cell, when not barren, contains a 

 .single, oblong, slender seed ; the cells in each drupe vary 

 from two to fourteen in number, and many of them are 

 abortive. The seeds within each drupe of Pandanus are 

 enclosed in a hard nut. These nuts are wanting in Podo- 

 carya, whose seeds are smaller than those of Pandaneee, 

 and not collected into drupes, but dispersed uniformly in 

 single cells over the entire circumference of the fruit. The 

 collection of the seeds into drupes, surrounded by a hard 

 nut, in the fruit of Pandanus, forms the essential difference 

 between this genus and our new genus Podocarya. 



In the fruit of Pandanus the summit of each cell is 

 covered with a hard cup or tubercle, irregularly hexagonal ; 

 and crowned at its apex with the remains of a withered 

 stigma. We have a similar covering of hexagonal tuber- 

 cles over the cells of Podocarya. The remains of a stigma 

 appear also in the centre of those hexagons above the apex 

 of each seed. Buckland's Bridyewater Treatise, vol. i 

 pp. 504, 505 (1836). 



In the title-page to the edition of Dr. Buckland's ' Bridge- 

 water Treatise,' published in 1858, after the death both of 

 the author and of Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown's name is placed 

 as having made additions to it. That Mr. Brown suggested 

 to Dr. Buckland many of the remarks contained in the 

 botanical portion of his Treatise, as well as of those con- 

 tained in his previous papers on the Cycadoidece, in the 



