12 
Mr. Brown’s Account of a new Genus of Plants, 
The structure now described actually exists in many families 
of plants ; and the principal deviations from it may be stated to 
depend either on a reduced or increased development of the 
parts enumerated, on differences in the manner of bursting, or 
on the confluence of two or more antherae. 
Reduced development may consist merely in the approxima¬ 
tion of the thecae, consequent on the narrowing or entire absence 
of the connecting portion of the filament, which is one of the 
most common states of anthera; in their partial confluence, 
generally at the upper extremity ; their parallelism either con¬ 
tinuing, 
In the Anthera, which are seldom compound, and whose thecas are usually distinct, 
the marginal production of pollen is generally obvious. 
In the Ovai'ia, however, where, with very few exceptions, the same arrangement of 
ovula really exists, it is never apparent, but is always more or less concealed either by 
the approximation and union of the opposite margins of the simple pistillum, and of 
the compound when multilocular; or in the unilocular pistillum with several parietal 
placentae by the union of the corresponding margins of its component parts. 
The few cases of apparent exception, where the ovula are inserted over the whole or 
greater part of the internal surface of the ovarium, occur either in the compound pistil¬ 
lum, as in Nymphaa and Nuphar; or in the simple pistillum, as in Butomea of Richard; 
and in Lardizabalea, an order of plants sufficiently distinct in this remarkable character 
alone, and differing also in the structure of embryo and in habit, from Menispermea, to 
which the genera composing \t(Laidi:abala and Stauntonia )have hitherto been referred. 
The marginal production of ovula, though always concealed in the ordinary or com¬ 
plete state of the Ovarium, not unfrequently becomes apparent where its formation is 
in some degree imperfect, and is most evident in those deviations from regular structure,, 
where stamina are changed, more or less completely, into pistilla. Thus, in the case of 
the nearly distinct or simple pistillum, it is shown by this kind of monstrosity in Se/nper- 
vivum tectorum ; in the compound multilocular pistillum, by that of Tropaolum majus; 
and in the compound pistillum with parietal placentae, by similar changes in Cheiranlhus 
Cheiri, Cochlearia armoracia, Papaver nudicaule and Salix oleifolia. 
In all the cases now quoted, and in several others with which I am acquainted, it is 
ascertained that a single stamen is converted into a simple pistillum, or into one of the 
constituent parts of the compound organ: a fact which in my opinion establishes the 
proposed type of Ovarium. 
I have 
