RAFFLESIA ARNOLD!. 405 



latter being subdivided into distiact lobes, as in many 

 Orchidece, a family which Cytinus also resembles in the struc- 

 ture of the seed, and probably in the mode of impregnation, 

 though so widely different in almost every other respect. 



It would certainly be difficult to reduce Baffiesia to the 

 view here taken of the formation of the compound ovarium 

 in these two genera ; and it may therefore, perhaps, be said, 

 that although the structure of Hydnora, in one important 

 particular, suggests or confirms the more probable notion 

 of the composition of ovarium in liafleisla, as already 

 stated,^ it is in other respects very distinct. 



Another point, which in my former paper I considered [225 

 doubtful, namely the seat or limit of the stigmata, is not 

 even now satisfactorily established ; for the slender processes 

 forming the hispid tips of the supposed styles, which have 

 so much the appearance of the ultimate divisions of stigma, 

 are merely hairs of a very simple structure, and exactly 

 resembling those found in other parts of the column ; 



' My confidence iu this liypothesis respectiuf; RuJJlesia is greatly lessened on 

 considering the structure of the female flower of a lately discovered species of 

 tlie genus, namely, Bafflesia Cumingii or Manillana, in wliich the style-like 

 processes terminating the column are much fewer in number, and so arranged 

 as to form a single circular series of about ten, not very distant from the limb, 

 with only from one to three processes within it, which are placed near the 

 centre, wliile the irregular cavities in the ovarium are evidently much more 

 numerous, and in arrangement hav'e no apparent relation to that of the supposed 

 styles, there being as great complexity in the centre as towards the circum- 

 ference. These relations between styles and ovarial cavities seem, according to 

 the figures of Rafflesia Patma, to be reversed in tliat species, its stjles being 

 apparently more numerous than the cavities of the ovarium; and as even iu 

 liqfflesia Arnoldl their correspondence is far from obvious, it would seem that 

 the number and arrangement of these processes afford no satisfactory evidence 

 of the composition of the ovarium in any known species of the genus. But if 

 tlie plaoentation of Bafflesia Arnoldi and Cumingii, notwithstanding the objec- 

 tions stated in the text (p. 4^04), be considered parietal, as Blume has described 

 it in B. Patma, and as from his figures it seems actually to be in Bnigmansia, 

 there would still be no means of determining the exact degree of composition 

 of ovarium in Bajjiesia ; for in no species of the genus is there the slightest in- 

 dication afforded by the arrangement of cavities or ramification of the assumed 

 placentK, to mark any definite number of component parts. Similar objections 

 apply with equal force to the adoption of tliat opinion which regards plaoenta- 

 tion as in all cases central or derived from the axis. 



In conclusion, therefore, it may perhaps be said that Bafflesia, in the 

 structure both of ovarium and antherffi, is not obviously reconcileable to any 

 hypotliesis hitherto proposed to account either for tiie origin or for a common 

 type of the sexual organs of Pheeuogamous plants. 



