100 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
with nearly all the essential eharacters I have endeavoured to 
establish in the preceding series of memoirs, as the leading fea- 
tures of the Icacinacece, viz. trees with alternate, glabrous, coria- 
ceous, petiolated, exstipulate leaves ; an axillary racemose inflo- 
rescence, with small flowers, more or less polygamous, and di- 
stinctly articulated on a short pedicel ; a small cupshaped, per- 
sistent calyx supporting the fruit, and unchanging with its 
growth ; a coi’olla of four or five fleshy, linear petals, with val- 
vate aestivation, arising from the hypogynous or stipitated sup- 
port of the ovarium; free stamens, equal in number to, and 
alternate with the petals ; introrse 2-lobed anthers ; an ovarium 
presenting a similar form, the same internal structure, and the 
subsequent development of that seen in Stemonurus and Pen- 
nantia, and a fruit, in all appearance, closely analogous to that 
existing in those genera. Hence it seems evident from the facts 
here shown, that wherever Penmntia, Stemonurus, and Platea 
are placed in the system, Sarcostigma should follow in juxta- 
position with them, unless the evidence now wanting, of the 
structure of its seed, should tend to a different location. If 
therefore Sarcostigma be found to hold a relation with the Phy- 
tocrenea, the questions will naturally arise, whether this hitherto 
dubious family should not be brought into a more proximate 
position in the system with the Icacinaceee, or whether I have 
been in error in referring the genus under consideration to the 
latter family. The group of the Phytocrenece was first proposed 
by Endlicher as a suborder of the Menispermacece, a family with 
which they hold little relationship. Prof. DeCaisne, if I mistake 
not, first pointed out the identity of Phytocrene with the Gyno- 
cephala of Blume, a genus placed among the Artocarpacece : hence 
Phytocrene and Nansiatum were removed by Prof. Lindley and 
other botanists to that family. This conclusion appears to me 
to have been too hastily drawn, for the Artocarpacece difier from 
them essentially in their stipular leaves, the presence of only a 
single floral envelope, which is often imperfect or altogether 
wanting, in then’ having fewer stamens than the number of the 
lobes of its perianthium, in their bifid style, which is often 
basilar, in their ovarium, with only a single suspended ovule, 
which is amphitropal or orthotropal, and an exalbuminous seed, 
often erect, though sometimes pendulous, with a thickened testa, 
and thick, fleshy cotyledons, often unequal in size. Phytocrene is 
very difierent in habit from any of the Artocarpacece, haidng ex- 
stipulate leaves, flowers with a regular and symmetrical calyx 
and corolla, stamens equal in number to the petals, an ovarium 
with two auatropal ovules, suspended from the summit of the 
cell, and a seed with a considerable quantity of albumen, en- 
closing an embryo with large foliaceous cotyledons, and a small 
