Miscellanea . 
379 
exist in Europe, one in the Paris Herbarium, from which Turner’s 
plate was drawn, the other in the rich collection of Robert 
Brown, Esq. These latter specimens are plentifully sprinkled 
over with sphcerosporous fructification (, stichidia ), as figured by 
Turner and Lamouroux, and described by various other authors. 
Our specimens on the contrary are, two of them furnished with 
sporideous fructification (Keramidia); the other is scarcely in 
fruit, but in one of its leaves there are two sphserosporous recep¬ 
tacles, or stichidia. 
The Keramidia or capsules are large, membranous, somewhat 
inflated, mammilliform, furnished with a perforated nipple, and 
they contain a dense globular mass of pyriforfn sporidia fixed on 
the apices of filaments which issue from a central placenta. 
They are placed at the apex of short, secund ramuli which spring 
from the lower part of the rachis of a leaf; or, morphologically 
speaking, the pectinate ribs of what should normally be a fene¬ 
strated leaf, destitute of connecting bars, are shortened, widened 
and inflated on one side near the apex, but below the extreme 
point; and produce from a point on their midrib, within the in¬ 
flated portion, a cluster of sporidia; the inflated portion forming, 
as above described, the membranous pericarp of the keramidium. 
Sometimes the whole leaf is converted into a raceme of such 
pedicellated capsules, and sometimes of two leaves which arise 
from the same point of the stem, one is entirely changed into 
capsules, the other developed into a falcate net-work as in other 
parts of the plant. 
It appears to me that Mr. Agardh, jun., is correct in referring 
Claudea to the Rhodomelece , notwithstanding some minor dis¬ 
crepancies, which have induced M. Decaisne to place it in a 
separate family which he calls Anomalophyllea. The kerami¬ 
dium described above bears a very strong resemblance to that of 
Dasija , and though the vegetation of Claudea is very remark¬ 
able, yet its structure is not so anomalous as at first sight it seems 
to be, nor do I think the mere circumstance of its ramuli being 
united into a net-work sufficient of itself to constitute a distinct 
family. It is on a difference in fructification, however, that M. 
Decaisne chiefly insists; and certainly he has had much fuller 
