30 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
become adnate, and is crowned by its five persistent teeth, the 
originally superior portion of the ovarium, and the base of the 
style, forming an umbilical scar upon its summit. The most 
prominent feature, however, is in the development of the fruit, 
and its structural resemblance to that of Villaresia ; this is a 
drupe containing a very thick ligneous putainen of considerable 
size, which is one-celled; but the longitudinal parietal placenta 
seen in the ovarium has now become so much thickened, and 
extended across the cavity of the cell, as to make it thus appear 
as if it were almost bilocular, and its single seed hence becomes 
inflected around the placenta, and made -to assume the form of 
the cavity thus formed, which in its transverse section is hippo- 
crepiform : the seed, as in the Aquifoliacea, has a copious albumen, 
with a small embryo near its summit, ha\ing a superior radicle, 
pointed towards its apex. From the identity of this construction 
to that of Villaresia, we may reasonably conclude, that in Bur- 
sinopetalum the more normal condition of the ovarium is also 
bilocular, which indeed is evident from the hollow, or longitudinal 
slit, lined with a distinct membrane, seen to extend down the 
middle of the thickened incomplete dissepiment, and which is 
most probably the vestige of the abortive cell. These facts all 
tend to prove, that however structurally opposed the Aquifoliacece 
may be to the Olacacea, they possess so many external cha- 
racters in common, as to have led the most expert botanists of 
our time to confound the two orders, by jflacing several genera 
in one family that belong to the other, and vice versa. I will 
here mention that Pogopetalum, placed by ]\lr. Bentham in Ola- 
cacecE, differs from that order, and especially from all the other 
genera of his tribe Icacinece, in which it is placed, by having its 
ovarium always completely 3-celled : from the lateral position of 
these cells, it is manifest that their normal number must be five, 
in correspondence with the other parts of the flower. This would 
bring the genus nearer in accordance with Ilex, but it differs 
from that genus and all others of the Aquifoliacece in the lestiva- 
tion of the corolla. 
In order to prevent the same confusion in future, it is very 
desirable to reduce the Olacacece nfithin more uniform and cer- 
tain limits, and I therefore propose to confine this family to those 
genera that have a free calyx, moi’e or less entire ; four to six 
distinct petals, always valvate in aestivation, and sometimes ad- 
hering by the margins at their base into a somewhat gamope- 
talous tube, but which by a little force may be separated from 
each other without any laceration ; stamens generally equal in 
number to the petals and opposite to them, sometimes double 
that number, in which case they are by turns opposite and alter- 
nate, or at times one half of them are sterile and appendiciform. 
