270 
royle's manual of materia medica, etc. 
lough fibrous bundles of vessels, invested with alternate, vaginating, 
dilated, aphyllous petioles, and terminating in a luxuriant head of 
compound umbels. General as well as partial involucre entirely 
wanting. Umbels 10 to 20 rayed, emitted from the dilated spherical 
head of a common peduncle, the rays 2 — 4 inches in length. Partial 
umbels with very short rays aggregated into round capitula varying 
from 10 to 20 rays in the fertile, and from 25 to 30 in the barren 
umbellulse. Flowers small ; barren generally mixed up with the fertile 
flowersC?). Border of the Calyx obsolete, being reduced to very 
minute denticular points. (Petals in the barren flowers small oblique, 
unequal-sided, acute, without an elongated acumen ?). Stylopodia 
urceolate and plicated, with a sinuous margin. Sty leu filiform, reflect- 
ed in the ripe fruit, rather short and slender, attached by a broad base. 
Fruit from 7 to 15, ripening on the partial umbels, supported on short 
stalks. Mericarps varying from broad elliptical to elliptical obovate, 
5—6 lines long by 3 to 4 lines broad, flat, thin, foliaceous, but some- 
what convex in the middle, with a dilated border, generally unequal 
sided, of a dark reddish-brown towards the centre, lighter towards the 
margin, perfectly smooth, with somewhat of a glossy surface. Dorsal 
primary ridges 5 : the three middle ridges filiform, slightly crested 
towards their confluence at the apex : the lateral ridges more obsolete, 
situated close to the margin, immersed in the substance of the border, 
but distinctly seen on the surface of commissure, and confluent with the 
middle nerve of the latter. The dilated border as wide as the space 
occupied by the three middle ridges. Fit/so in the dorsal furrows large 
and broad, occupying the entire- width of the valleculas, stretching from 
base to apex, usually solitary, but sometimes double in one or other of 
the middle furrows, and generally double or dichotomous, with a small 
branch in the broadest side of the margin, turgid with a fcetid juice : 
vittas of the commissure varying from 4 to H, very equal and variable : 
one very slender vitta, which is frequently dichotomous in two fine 
threads confluent at the apex, being placed close on either side of the 
middle nerve ; another of the size of the dorsal vittce, situated more 
outwards, and a third at the inner side of the dilated border, over the 
edge of the seed, more slender, but frequently subdivided and interrupt- 
ed, so as to cover the border with a beautiful network of anastomosing 
ramifications. Seeds flattened, with plain albumen. Carpophores 
bipartite, persistent, twice the length of the pedicels. Flowers white? 
The plant' above described I believe to be the true " Asa- 
fbetida disgunensis," or " Hingiseh" of Kasmpfer. It does 
not appear to have been met with by any other botanist since 
it was examined in situ by that excellent and, careful observer 
a century and a half ago. 
I have compared my materials with Keempfer's description and: 
figures (Amcen. Exot. p. 537,) and with his original specimens con- 
tained, in the Banksian collection in the British Museum, and found 
them, so far as comparison could be instituted, to agree in every essen- 
tial respect. The leaves il instar Posoniae ramosa" as represented in 
liis figures, have the segments more obtuse and sinuated, and more 
alternate in their offset than they are represented in my drawing ; but- 
