CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
133 
what depressed in the centre, where a small umbonate point is 
seen ; and at some distance from this centre five distinct styles 
originate, which are rather short, very distant from each other, 
somewhat erect and divergent, there being no distinguishable 
stigmata, except their merely glandular points; the ovary has 
five equal complete cells ranged round a central axis, the dis- 
sepiments corresponding with the external grooves and alter- 
nating with the styles ; there are several ovules in each cell, all 
standing erect and crowded together at the base of the inner 
angles of the cells. The fruit is spherical, and 2 lines in dia- 
meter; it has been incorrectly described as a berry, but its 
fleshy sarcocarp encloses an indehiscent 3-5-grooved, 3-5-celled 
nut, the walls and dissepiments of which, though very thin, are 
crustaceous ; each cell contains one, more generally two or three, 
erect black seeds. The seed is oval when it is solitary, plano- 
convex when there are two, or angular when there are three 
seeds in each cell : it is covered by a smooth and very fleshy 
tunic, marked on its ventral face by a prominent line ; this cannot 
be an arillus, because it contains the simple chord of the raphe, 
which extends from a somewhat lateral and basal hilum to a 
small hollow in its summit, which it penetrates to reach the 
second tunic ; it is analogous to the same kind of covering as 
that I have described in Magnolia and Clusia, and designated as 
an arilline^, being a fleshy development of the primine of the 
ovule : the next is a hard testaceous shell, regularly oval, densely 
pitted by minute hollows arranged longitudinally in parallel 
lines ; it cannot be the testa, because it has no raphe, being a 
growth of the secundine of the ovule ; in its summit there is a 
hollow, with a small diapylar hole, through which the chord of 
the raphe passes to reach the chalaza of the inner membranaceous 
integument or legmen, which closely invests the fleshy albumen. 
The embryo is somewhat shorter than the albumen, in which it 
is imbedded, but is much narrower ; the cotyledons are oblong- 
ovate and foliaceous, equal in length to the terete radicle, the 
extremity of which reaches the base, and is therefore close to the 
hilum of the seed. 
We have here a structure which does not correspond in all its 
characters with any particular family, but which evidently be- 
longs to the Celastral alliance. It agrees with the Hippocratacece 
in the position of its stamens within a cupular disk, but differs 
in the imbricate aestivation of its petals and in the position of 
its ovules. It accords with the Celastracece in its erect ovules 
* Linn. Trans, xxii. 80; Contributions to Botany, i. 211 ; Ann. Nat. 
Hist. 3 ser. iv. 26. 
