RAFFLESIA Al^XOLDT, ETC. \1^

I have also to statc^ that an extensive and liip:lily import- ^n ant essay, entitled, An Attempt to analyse RhlrMufhccey by Mr. William Griffith, has been read during the present season before the Linnean Society, of which an abstract is given in the Proceedings. "From this essay I have here in- troduced the character of Baprla, a new genus belonging to Baf/lesiacece ; and have ventured to propose an alteration of the trivial name from Him a! a jj ana to Gri///fhii, in honour of the discoverer of this interesting addition to the tribe Ttafflesiece, whose species, with one exception, liave names similarlv derived.

��RArFLESIACEiE.

Char. Diff. Ord. PpriantJiwm monophyllum regulare.

Corolla nulla.

Stamina : Antherae numerosse, simplici serie.

Ovarium: placentis pluribus polyspermis, ovuHs ortho- tropis (sed in quibusdam reciirvatione apicis, penitus vel partim, liberi funiculi quasi anatropis).

P erica rjnum indehiscens polyspermum.

Emhrjio indivisus (cum v. absque albumine).

Parasiticae racUcibus rariusve i/i ramis i)lantarum dicotj/Ie* done arum.

stages of development, and which lie extends to Pho2nof]ramous plants generally, in 'some respects different from that laken by ]\L ^Mirbehwhp considers the nuclt-us of llie ovuliim, in its earliest state, as inclosed in its coats, which gradually open until they have attained their maximum of expansion, wlicu they again contract around the nucleus, and, at the same time, by elongating, completely inclose it. ]\[r. Brown, on the other hand, regards the earliest stage of the nucleus as merely a contraction taking place in the apex of a pre-existing papilla, whose surface, as well as substance, is originally uniform, and that its coats are of subsequent formation, each coat consisting, at first, merely of an annular thickening at the base of the nucleus, which, by gradual elongation, it entirely covers before impregnation takes place.

" But this mode of development of the ovulum, he remarks, though very f'cneral, is not without exception; for in many, perhaps in all, Asclepiadea and Jpocinecp, the ovulum continues a uniform cellular tissue, cxhibitmg no distinction of parts until after the application of the pollen tube to a delinite part of its surface, when an internal separation or included nucleus lijst becomes visible."— See a translation of this abstract in Aiuial. des Sc. Xat ser. 2(ie, torn, i, p. 3G9.

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