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On two new Ceylon plants related to Sciaphila of Blume. 

 By Capt. J. G. Champion, 95th Regt. 



[Communicated by G. Gardner, Esq., M.D.] 



[The two little plants, descriptions of which my friend Capt. 

 Champion has communicated to me for publication in this Journal, 

 are certainly very distinct from anything of the kind hitherto des- 

 cribed, and are, as he states, evidently related to the little known 

 Sciaphila of Blume, a native of Java, the Flora of which Island bears 

 very intimately on that of Ceylon. It is now nearly two years 

 since I accompanied Capt. Champion to the locality where these 

 plants grow, and was then struck with the resemblance which they 

 bear in habit to some small plants, natives of Brazil, which a few years 

 ago, I formed into a distinct family under the name of Treuridacece. 

 Capt. Champion alludes to this resemblance, but nothing is known 

 of their seeds, and the economy of the male organs is totally different 

 from that of the present plants. Capt. Champion believes that 

 they ought to form the type of a distinct order, but I can find no 

 marks by which they are to be distinguished from Artocarpacece, ex- 

 cept, indeed, their habit, which certainly forms a great contrast 

 to that of such trees as the jack and bread fruit, but that of itself is 

 not sufficient to exclude them from the order, of which they will 

 constitute a section. The numerous carpels of these little plants 

 would seem to form a distinction between them and the Artocarpus 

 tribe, but in the latter they are not always solitary, two being gene- 

 rally found in Brosimum. 



Capt. Champion does not state where the point of attachment 

 of the seed is within the utricule. In Hyalisma ianthina I find it to 

 be at the upper part of the parietes as in Artocarpus, not, however, as 

 in it on the side which bears the style, but on the opposite one. The 

 embryo I find lying on the outside of a thin fleshy albumen, or but 

 very slightly covered with it, on the side of the seed opposite to the 

 raphe, nearly straight, and with the radical directed towards the 

 hilum. The radical is short, conical, and of a brownish colour : the 

 cotyledons elliptical, compressed, and white. — G. G.] 



I enclose descriptions of two minute but interesting plants, 

 with which I have been acquainted for some time, but which 

 do not appear to have been known to the botanists who had 



