68 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
examined of other species. In the female flowers, the petals 
are divaricated, less fleshy ; and the six sterile shorter stamens 
stand erect and free round three gibbous ovaria, supported on a 
short gynsecium. In the typical species, the fruit is gibbously 
oval and somewhat compressed, about an inch long, having its 
stipitate enlargement near the middle of the ventral side, at 
some distance from the persistent stigma : it is covered by a 
coriaceous indehiscent husk, of a yellowish colour, that becomes 
dark in drying ; between this and the putamen is a yellowish 
mesocarp, having the consistence of an arillus, and apparently 
formed of rounded masses aggregated together, corresponding 
in size to the large areoles indicated by the grooved lines on the 
surface of the putamen : it dries into a horny substance insoluble 
in water or alcohol. In the Guiana species, the fruit is cylin- 
drically oblong, with a laterally basal support, and with the 
remains of the stigma in its apex, the putamen being quite 
cylindrical, and the embryo straight. The peculiar structure of 
the putamen and seed has been already noticed in the diagnosis 
of the tribe Anomospermea : one of its chief peculiarities 
consists in the form of its condyle, which is a longitudinal 
thin osseous plate, projecting from the ventral face of the 
putamen to near the centre of the cell, and upon which the seed 
is folded and attached ; several other short transverse plates 
project across the dorsal face of the cell, which penetrate into 
the sinuosities of the albumen, after the manner of many Ano- 
nacea-, these, however, are only adventitious processes. The 
lamellarly ruminated structure of the albumen much resembles 
that of Tiliacora, and the embryo, either straight or uncinately 
curved, is equally elongated and slender; but the radicle is 
relatively much shorter, and the cotyledons are accumbent in 
the one, and incumbent in the other. 
Mr. Bentham, in-bis ' Notes on Menispermacece,’ in accordance 
with the system he has so extensively adopted, considers all the 
plants of this genus reducible to a single species. It is impos- 
sible to concur in this opinion, which is absolutely incompatible 
with the facts here registered. 
Anomospermum, nob. — Flores dioici vel rarius polygami. 
Masc. Sepala 6, biseriata, quorum 3 exteriora minuta, bractei- 
formia, 3 interiora valde majora, alterna, orbiculata vel 
oblonga, concava, carnosa, petaloidea, glabra, aestivatione im- 
bricata. Petala 6, sequalia, sub-biseriata, sepalis paulo bre- 
viora, suberecta, vel arete congregata, interdum unguiculata, 
gibbosa, concava, carnosa, apice truncata, marginibus valde 
inflexis, hinc stamina amplectentia. Stamina 6, petalis sequi- 
longa et opposita, cum his inserta ; filamenta sigraoidea, car- 
