1839] 



Remarks on Camhogia Gutta. 



129 



seeded berries, the stigmas sometimes trifid : stamina not always polya- 

 delphous ? &c. From this very unusual combination of quinary and 

 quaternary, forms I am led to infer that the character is only partly de- 

 rived from the specimen, and partly, if not principally, from notes com- 

 municated by Konig, who, it apjpears, from the fact of his having com- 

 bined, on the supposition that they were the same plant, two distinct 

 species, was not aware of the difference, and misled Murray by commu- 

 nicating written characters of a Garcinia, and flowers of another plant, 

 and between the two, there has resulted a set of characters not likely to 

 be often found combined in the same species, and still less frequently in 

 one small specimen. Roxburgh, on the other hand, briefly and clearly 

 defines a genus of plants well known to him, and extensively distributed 

 over India, about which he has scarcely left room for a mistake. If fur- 

 ther proof be wanted in support of the opinion I have advanced that this 

 is a hybrid genus, 1 adduce Cambessides, whose authority is quoted for 

 the identity of Stalagmii'is and Xanthochymus, He has strictly followed 

 Murray, adopted all the contradictions of his character, and constituted 

 a genus embodying, first, Roxburgh's genus Xanthochymus, next, Petifc 

 Thours' Brindonia, evidently identical with Garcinia ; then Loureiro's 

 Oxycarpus, also Garcinia; and lastly, (if I am not misled by Mr. George 

 Don, whom I am obliged for want of Cambessides own memoir to fol- 

 low) nearly the whole of Roxburgh's species of Garcinia', as if Roxburgh 

 was so bad a botanist as not to be able, with growing plants before him, 

 to distinguish between two genera so very distinct as Garcinia and his 

 own Xanthochymus, In a paper which I published in the Madras Jouv 

 nal of Science for October 1836, I showed, from the internal evidence af- 

 forded by the tw^o sets of characters, that Murray's Stalagmitis and Rox- 

 burg;h's Xanthochymus were partly identical, and attributed the discre- 

 pancies to defects of Murray's solitary specimen ; a view, which Mr. 

 Brown has shown to be only partly right, by proving that they in some 

 measure originated in the imperfect observation of Kbnig, who supplied 

 Murray with the materials fur his genus. 



Having now adduced what I esteem conclusive evidence in support of 

 the opinion I advanced above, that Murray's genus is spurious, and that of 

 Cambessides, founded on it, is most unnatural, as associating species that 

 never can combine generically ; while Roxburgh's is a strictly natural 

 genus, including several nearly allied species, and, moreover, probably 

 referable to a natural order different from more than half of the species 

 referred to it under the name of Stalagmitis by Cambessides : I consider 

 myself fully justified in continuing to adopt the generic name Xantho- 

 chymus (even though opposed by the highest botanical authorities) un- 

 til careful examination of the original specimen, with reference to the 

 elucidation of the discrepancies I have indicated, shall have proved that 



