10 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
obtained. The embryo is of a very different and very peculiar 
form in all the Heterocliniece, where the cotyledons are extremely 
thin, foliaceous, and present the singular anomaly of being 
widely and divaricately spread on a plane parallel with the ex- 
ternal face. 
When, after careful study, I first attempted to classify the 
Menispermacea, it became manifest, from the foregoing evidence, 
that the floral parts, always of diminutive size, were little adapted 
for this purpose ; but by adopting as a basis the development of 
the fruit, it was easy to establish several valid and well-defined 
groups. An interval of nearly sixteen years has tended to con- 
firm this conviction ; and accordingly the same arrangement 
which I formerly adopted is here repeated, with some modifica- 
tions, by dividing the family into seven well-marked tribes, in 
the following manner : — 
Tribe 1. Heteroclinie^. The putamen here is generally 
osseous, rarely chartaceous, somewhat compressed antically and 
postically, 1 -locular, with an internal umboniform or globular 
condylus in the middle of its ventral face, which is often divided 
into two chambers by a partition, to which the more or less 
meniscus-shaped seed is attached in the manner before men- 
tioned, the line of the raphe with a portion of the integuments 
being drawn into this partition, from which it is difficult to 
detach it. But sometimes the condyle entirely vanishes in a 
mere umboniform depression of the ventral face of the nut, cor- 
respondingly convex within the cell, the seed being suspended 
from near its summit by a mere point or extremity of the raphe 
which is seen continuous upon the free integument, running 
down its ventral face : this modification occurs in Calycocarpum^ 
Jateorhiza, Fibraurea, Parabcena, Aspidocarya, and Odontocarya. 
It should be mentioned, as a general character of the tribe, that 
the remnant of the, style is always seen near the summit of the 
drupe, or comparatively little removed from it. The embryo is 
consequently nearly orthotropous, with large foliaceous coty- 
ledons placed laterally and divaricately on the same plane, and 
imbedded in distinct cells of the albumen, which is thin and 
homogeneous on the dorsal side, always thicker on the ventral 
portion, which latter is most frequently deeply cleft or ruminated 
by numerous fissures, as in Anona, the radicle being short, 
terete, and superior. 
Tribe 2. Anomospermeae. Here the style is on the apparent 
summit of the drupe, whose stipitate support is on one side of 
the longer diameter of the fruit, so that the style is more or less 
excentric to the real base of the drupe, which, properly speak- 
ing, is transversely or obliquely oval and gibbous. The putamen 
is coriaceous, and the seed is quite cylindrical and straight for 
