XXIX.— ANALYTICAL DRAWINGS OF 
MONOCOTYLEDONS III. 
A S the Natural System is an endeavour to express the relationships of plants as 
gathered, not from single characters, but from the totality of their structure, 
several Families are now classed in the Order Liliiflora because they agree with the 
rest in most characters, although they have an inferior ovary and consequently 
epigynous insertion of the perianth and stamens. Among these, the Amaryl/idacea ?, 
Dioscoreacea, and Tridacea are represented in our British flora. 
Belonging mostly to dry subtropical regions, the seventy-five genera and seven 
hundred species of Amaryllidacea are represented with us only by the three genera 
here figured — the Snowdrops, Snowflakes, and Narcissi. They agree in being 
bulbous perennial plants with long, entire, sheathing, and generally sword-shaped 
radical leaves with parallel veins ; whilst their inflorescence is a one-, or several-, 
flowered scape with showy flowers enclosed in membranous spathes. There are the 
two, three-leaved, petaloid perianth-whorls of most Liliiflora ; six stamens, the anthers 
of which in this Family are introrse ; and three united carpels with numerous ovules 
on their central placentas. The fruits in these British genera are capsules which split 
loculicidally , i.e. down the midribs of their constituent carpels, thus breaking into the 
loculus or chamber of the ovary, the pericarp dividing into three valves. The ovules 
are anatropous or inverted, their elongated stalk or funicle adhering down one side of 
the seed as a somewhat fleshy raphe , while the embryo is short and straight and 
occupies the central line of the fleshy albumen. 
Galanthus , the Snowdrop genus, is characterised by having two linear leaves ; 
solitary, white flowers, which, though erect in the bud, protect their pollen and honey 
by drooping before they expand ; spreading sepals and smaller, erect petals, notched 
at their apex and furnished with two honey-secreting green-lined grooves on their 
inner surfaces. The anthers are wider below, and converge into a cone round the 
style, each of them terminating in a stiff bristle-like point or connective and splitting 
by two slits down the upper part of its inner surface. The ovary is ovoid in form and 
remains green in the fruit-stage ; and the simple tapering style projects beyond the 
cone of anthers. There are not many insects about at the season when the Snow- 
drop melts its way through the snow ; but bees visiting the hanging blossoms can 
hardly fail to touch the projecting stigma, so parting with any pollen that may be 
already adherent to their heads, and then by touching the stiff connectives to shake 
the pollen out of the anthers. Anthers and stigma mature simultaneously ; and, 
though the flowers remain expanded a long time on the chance of insects’ visits, if 
these fail, the anthers separate and some pollen may fall on to the stigma of the 
same blossom. 
In the first row of figures on our Plate, which represent the Snowdrop 
( Galanthus nivalis Linne), the first figure is a sepal ; the second, a petal ; the 
third, a petal as seen from within, showing the honey-grooves; the fourth, the 
