40 The Palms of British East India. 



face with unequal, straight, subulate spines and prickles, those of the 

 edges being the longest, otherwise in the parts not covered by 

 the spathes unarmed. 



Spathes with obsolete limbs, lowest about a span long, compress- 

 ed, keeled along the centre of the back, excepting the short erect half 

 lanceolate limb, armed with straight prickles with conical bases. 

 The other spathes are shorter, more clavate, without an obvious carina, 

 and only slightly armed, or (as the uppermost) quite unarmed. 



Branches just exserted from the spathes, erect, a foot or a span 

 distant, lowest about a span long, decompound. Spathes sheath- 

 ing, rather lax, smooth, lowest about an inch long. Lower divisions 

 compound, with' several spreading spikes, with similar but much 

 smaller sheathing spathes, uppermost internode often abortive as in 

 certain Grasses. 



Fruits apparently terminating short stout stalks, suffulted by 

 three annular amplectent bractes, and surrounded at the base by 

 the spreading portion of the perianth, elliptic-oblong, with the 

 mammilliform apex seven lines long, four broad, chesnut coloured. 

 Scales with a broad shallow central furrow, and dark edges. Seed 

 (apparently berried,) erect, convex on one face, and conspicu- 

 ously areolate with foveolse, on the other convex with a central 

 umbilicus, from which the areolae seem to radiate. Albumen horny, 

 cartilaginous, on a long section reniform, with as many stout enter- 

 ing processes as join areolae, that from the umbilicus much the 

 largest and filled with a mass of cellular substance. Embryo basilar. 



This species does not appear to me allied to any others I 

 have met with. In the division and direction of the branches 

 of the spadix, it approaches to the Piptospathae This and 

 the very frequent, conical aculei on the lower spathes seem 

 to me its chief characteristics. 



18. (8) C. Royleanus, vaginarum spinis solitariis com- 

 pressis petiolorum superioribus uncinatis, pinnis aequidis- 

 tantibus linearibus angustissimis (long. 10-11 uncialibus lati- 



