198 Babu Nagendranatha Vasu— Copper plate grant of Vicvarupa. [Dec. 
to stamens becoming converted into carpellary organs; not always, 
however, for at times there is an increase in number of carpels without 
any alteration of stamens or of other organs. But the presence of a 
complete axially situated orange within another has not, I believe, been 
recorded. 
Though very uncommon, the condition just detailed, which is the 
second way in which the existence of a fruit within a fruit may be 
explained, is nevertheless not novel. An excellent account of a pre¬ 
cisely parallel case lias been given by Dr. Masters ( Gard . Chron. i, 1882, 
p. 11, f. 1), who records the phenomenon as occurring in Tropidocarpum 
an American Crucifer. In that instance a small ovary occupied, as in 
the present case, the very extremity of the flower-stem within the 
normal seed-vessel. And it is possible that the condition of affairs in 
what is known as the St. Valery apple may be of the same nature, 
though another explanation has been offered of the structure in this 
case and it must be admitted that there, as in the case of the Love-apple 
where too an adventitious series of carpels is occasionally produced, the 
adventitious one is intimately combined with the primary series. 
As showing the rarity of the condition it may be mentioned that 
the Tropidocarpum example appears to have been the first that Dr. 
Masters, our greatest authority on teratological questions, had met 
with; if any similar condition has since been recorded, the record has 
escaped my attention. 
In the Gardener s Chronicle instance only one accessory carpellary 
whorl is present; here there are two. Partly on this account therefore, 
and partly owing to the rarity of the condition, but chiefly because the 
phenomenon is here so obvious and the abnormal organs are so tangi¬ 
ble— the accessory ovary in this Papaya measures three inches in 
length, that of Tropidocarpum only as many lines — it seems worth 
while recording this instance of pleiotaxy of the gyncecium. 
The Philological Secretary exhibited two photographs of the inscrip¬ 
tion on a rock in the Brahmaputra forwarded by Mr. E. A. Gait. 
The following papers were read :— 
I. Discovery of a copper plate grant of Vigvarupa , one of the Sena 
kings of Bengal.—By Babu Nagendranatha Vasu. 
(Abstract.) 
In the village Madanapada, Post Office Pinjari, Parganah Kotali- 
pada of the Faridpur District, a peasant while digging his field found a 
