138 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY, 
the length, and only half the breadth of the other ; it has much 
stouter peduncles, and pedicels of only half the length of the 
other, their number being only three in the Organ Mountains 
plant, and six or seven in that from Juan Fernandez ; the former 
has twelve petals and six or seven ovaries ; the latter usually 
eight petals and eight ovaries. 
2. Tasmannia. 
There appears to be little difference between this genus and 
Urimys, the principal distinction being in its sometimes poly- 
gamous or monoecious flowers, and in its having occasionally, by 
abortion, only one or two ovaries ; there is, however, a marked * 
difference in the form of its stigma. The calyx is at first entire, 
and closed as in Drimys, and becomes divided into two equal 
hemispherical valves, which soon fall away. Endlicher erro- 
neously describes the calyx as consisting of two flat sepals. One 
species has eight or ten petals, a second five or six, w’hile in the 
third their number is sometimes reduced to two. The stamens 
are seated upon a short cylindrical gynophorus, in four rows, of 
which the outer series are shortest ; the oval anther-cells, sepa- 
rated by an interval, are adnately fixed and partly immersed in 
the margin of the filament, and they burst by a lateral fissure. 
The ovaries, sometimes solitary, often two or four, are seated in 
the centre of the stamens ; they are suborbicular, somewhat 
gibbous, with a sessile stigma in the form of a crenated crest, 
which runs from the apex down the inner side ; they are uni- 
locular, with a single longitudinal parietal placenta, which in 
the male flower is often sterile, but which in the female bears 
several ovules arranged biserially as in Drimys. The fruit is a 
berry, about the size of a large pea, with a furrow upon two. 
opposite sides ; it contains from fifteen to eighteen small reni- 
form seeds, with a polished black exterior, and which in general 
structure appear to correspond with those of Drimys. 
The species hitherto assigned to this genus are natives of 
Australia and Van Diemen’s Land, where they form evergreen 
trees, the bark and leaves of which generally abound in an aro- 
matic principle, as in Drimys. I have no hesitation in referring 
hither the Drimys piperita of Dr. Hooker, from the island of 
Borneo, where it is found at an altitude of 8000 feet. It agrees 
with Tasmannia in its flowers sometimes having no stamens, 
with a solitary carpel ; and we often meet with hermaphrodite 
flowers, sometimes having only one, but more generally having 
four ovaries. Its fringed stigma, decurrent to the bottom of 
the ovary, corresponds with Tasmannia, and is quite at variance 
with that of Drimys : in like manner, the form and position of 
