146 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
the internal space of the fruit is filled with an edible gelatinous 
pulp : as the fruit dries, this pulp contracts into a pellicular 
covering that closely invests the black external tunic of the seeds, 
and within the substance of which numerous spiral vessels are 
distributed. It appears to me that this pulp is a secretion 
originating from the funicular point of attachment of each seed 
to the placenta, rather than an emanation from the entire 
surface of the cell ; for round the hilar foramen in the seed of 
Lardizabala there exists a light- coloured annular cicatrix, which 
probably indicates the organic point of connexion of the pulpy 
envelope with that part of the external tunic, as described in 
the manner above-mentioned in Decaisnea, and which also forms 
the point of its junction with the placenta; for it will be shown 
that within a cavity of the external tunic there exists an expan- 
sion of the funicular mass, which evidently maintains that con- 
nexion through the hilar foramen before alluded to. 
There are some peculiarities in the structure of the seed in 
Lardizabala that are worthy of attention. The seeds 'are ovoid, 
unequally gibbous, always more or less compressed, somewhat 
angular by the force of mutual pressure, and straighter upon 
the face next to the pericarp. The hilum, situated below the 
middle upon this face, consists of a rather small and somewhat 
oval aperture, which is filled with a fungous substance that be- 
comes fleshy when moistened, and which is continuous with 
a mass of similar substance filling a large cavity within the 
tunic. This outer tunic, usually considered as the testa, is 
dark-coloured, thin, and somewhat chartaceous ; and within it 
is found an inner coating consisting of two distinct adherent 
integuments. The albumen forming the enclosed nucleus is 
somewhat corneous, with a large hollow chamber on the side 
next the hilum ; the two integuments last mentioned closely 
invest the inner surface of this chamber, as well as the ex- 
ternal face of the albumen, but the outer shell is in no way 
inflected into the cavity. If we cut through a seed longitu- 
dinally across the line of the hilum, the albumen in this sec- 
tion appears of a gibbously hippocrepical form, with a large 
ovoid hollow space towards the centre ; the two extremities of 
this horse-shoe are widely apart, the space in the form of a broad 
plate being tilled with tbe fungous mass before mentioned. If 
we now cut through another seed in a transverse direction across 
the hilum, we find the hollow space deep and narrow, the albu- 
men appearing in the shape of a more compressed horse-shoe, 
of which the crura are parallel ; and in the vacuity is seen the 
same fungous substance in the form of a flattened plate, between 
which and the integuments lining the cavity there exists a very 
narrow space, showing that it is quite free from them in all 
