360 
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BOTANY. 
knife is passed round the periphery of the putamen, its two 
flattened sides are easily torn away from the adherent edges of 
the condyle, leaving a corresponding helical cicatrix upon the 
two faces, and showing correlative grooves on the outer surfaces 
of the putamen. We might suppose that the emhryo would fill 
the entire length of the helical cavity of the integument ; but it 
was otherwise in the specimens I examined ; for although this 
spiral cavity consisted of nearly three gyrations, the elongated 
slender embryo only extended through half of the first turn, 
the remaining two gyrations being quite empty ; the radicular 
end, however, touched its normal point on the periphery, at the 
beginning of the first coil. 
I have explained how the development in Tiliacora, Diplo- 
clisia, &c. takes place by the simple process of excentric growth ; 
indeed in all the genera of the family, even in the more extreme 
cases just mentioned, the amount of curvature of the integu- 
ment and seed is coequal and symmetrical with the unequal 
expansion of the ovary, and therefore of the pericarp and puta- 
men ; but in Spirospermum the one greatly exceeds the ratio of 
the other, as is shown above ; and this forms a solitary exception 
to the otherwise general rule. 
It would be instructive if we could ascertain the cause of this 
singular growth. In all cases the original ovular integument 
grows lengthwise ; and in Spirospermum we might suppose that 
it grows into a very slender elongated tube within the cell of 
the ovary, gradually extending itself till it completes a circle, 
and that at that point, meeting with obstruction, it would be 
turned aside and carried forward in an inward spiral coil for 
nearly two other gyrations, terminating in the centre ; in this 
case the entire eoiling tube ought to be free; but we see the 
reverse; for its adjacent sides are found agglutinated together 
and also with the interposing spiral eondyle, which has simul- 
taneously accompanied it in its growth. By what means this 
is accomplished appears an enigma very difficult of explana- 
tion. 
The only species of Spirospermum is a tree of low stature, or 
a shrub with pendent branches charged with large, lanceolate- 
oblong, coriaceous, polished, glabrous leaves, with many parallel 
oblique nerves, which anastomose near the margin ; the petiole 
is short and stout : the inflorescence is a terminal panicle, twice 
the length of the leaves, pendent, and, with the fruit, becomes 
black in drying; it is copiously branched, its ultimate branches 
bearing, in the $ plant, two long fructiferous pedicels, swollen 
at their summit into a receptacle, which carries nine crowded 
stipitate drupes, all being glabrous, bractless, and black. The 
drupes are exsiccous, orbicular, extremely compressed, acutely 
