128 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
much shorter, fasciculated panicles, and bare of leaves, or having 
only a minute bract in their place : this raceme-like development 
is, properly speaking, a young floriferous branch with abortive 
leaves, as is proved by the frequent presence of regular leaves 
diminishing gradually to the size of minute bracts. The female 
raceme is elongated, generally solitary, or geminate in each axil, 
with a number of approximated large orbicular bracts (appearing 
like young leaves as they really are), each bearing in its axil from 
three to ten fasciculated pedicellated flowers ; sometimes, however, 
these leaflets are wanting, when their place is supplied by diminu- 
tive bracteoles. The male flowers, always minute in size, consist 
of four, rarely five or six, oblong sepals, a single cup-shaped petal, 
and a single stamen in the centre, with its anther usually4-lobed, or 
where the lobes are constricted and 2-celled it appears 8-lobed, or 
by suppression of some of them 5-6-lobed, all the lobes fixed on 
the margin of a peltiform connective supported on a short slender 
filament. The female flower, also minute in size, has only one 
oblong sepal, with a shorter petal attached to its claw, both fixed 
extrorsely at the base of a solitary ovary, which grows into a 
small fleshy drupe. The species are numerous and often diffieult 
to determine; for, owing to the extreme simplicity of the floral 
parts and their minute size, they afford few discriminating cha- 
racters ; the principal dififerential features therefore rest chiefly on 
the habit of the plant, on the form of the leaves, the comparative 
length of the petiole, the point of its insertion, and on the in- 
florescence ; these oflPer many good and constant characters. 
The authors of the ‘ Flora Indica’ (p. 200), in their attempt to 
determine the Indian species of Cissampelos, came to the extra- 
ordinary conclusion that all the Asiatic, most of the African, 
and nearly all those belonging to the New World constitute one 
single species, and they fix upon Cissampelos Pareira of Linnaeus, 
a native of the Antilles, as the representative of this common 
type. In their view it does not signify whether the leaves be deeply 
or only slightly peltate, or whether the petiole be inserted on 
the margin of the blade — whether they be cordate, or otherwise ; 
let them be acute, round, or elongated, whether upon very long 
petioles or nearly sessile, however various be the form or extent 
of the inflorescence, whether bracts be present or absent — all these 
differences, which are regarded as of great specific importance 
by botanists in general, are of no value whatever in their consi- 
deration. Such an unprecedented annihilation of about fifty dis- 
similar kinds of Cissampelos, which have long been recognized in 
various botanical works, and to which distinct characters have 
been assigned, ought to be viewed with distrust, in the absence 
of good reasons ; a repudiation of such vast extent, even on the part 
of botanists of deservedly high repute, will induce most botanists 
