Page:Illustrations of Indian Botany, Vol. 1.djvu/257

ILLUSTRATIONS OF INDIAN BOTANY.

131 Stalagmitis and Xanthochymus are therefore one genus, as Cambessides has already observed, giving the preference to the earlier name of Murray. This, however, forms but a small part of the whole specimen, the larger portion being, I am inclined to think, the same with your plant, of which I have seen, and I believe still possess, the specimen you sent to Don.* The structure, however, of this greater portion cannot be ascertained from the few very young flower-buds belonging to it. It approaches also very closely, in its leaves especially, to that specimen in Hermann's herbarium, which may be considered as the type of Linnaeus' Cambogia gutta. A loose fruit, pasted on the sheet with Konig's plant, probably belongs to the larger portion, and resembles " Geertner's Morella."

So far all appears clearly in favour of Stalagmitis, and had Murray in drawing up his char- acter rigidly confined himself to the description of the flowers before him, I should at once have adopted his name in preference to Roxburgh's. 'But on turning to his character, as given in Schreber's genera plantarum, we find a 4-leaved calyx, a 4-petaled corolla, and a 4-lobed stigma, combined with pentadelphous stamens, 3-seeded berries, the stigmas sometimes trifid : stamina not always polyadelphous ? &c. From this very unusual combination of quinary and quaternary forms I am led to infer that the character is only partly derived from the specimen, and partly, if not principally from notes communicated by Konig, who, it appears, from the fact of his having combined, on the supposition that they were the same plant, two distinct species, was not aware of the difference, and misled Murray by communicating written characters of a Garcinia, and flowers of another plant, and between the two, there has resulted a set of characters not likely to be often found combined in the same species and still less frequently in one small specimen, Roxburgh on the other hand briefly and clearly defines a genus of plants well known to him, and extensively distributed over India, about which he has scarcely left room for a mistake. If further proof be wanted in support of the opinion I have advanced that this is a hybrid genus, I adduce Cambessides, whose authority is quoted for the identity of Stalag- mitis and Xanthochymus. He has strictly followed Murray, adopted all the contradictions of his character and constituted a genus embodying, first, Roxburgh's genus Xanthochymus, next, Petit Thours' Brindonia, evidently identical with Garcinia, then Loureiro's Oxycarpus, also Garcinia, and lastly, (if I am not misled by Mr. George Don, whom I am obliged for want of Cambessides' own memoir to follow) nearly the whole of Roxburgh's species of Gar- cinia, as if Roxburgh was so bad a Botanist as not to be able, with growing plants before him, to distinguish between two genera so very distinct as Garcinia and his own Xanthochymus. In a paper which I published in the Madras Journal of Science for October 1836, I showed from the internal evidence afforded by the two sets of characters that Murray's Stalagmitis and Roxburgh's Xanthochymus were partly identical, and attributed the discrepancies to defects of Murray's solitary specimen, a view, which Mr. Brown has shown to be only partly right by proving that they in some measure originated in the imperfect observation of Konig, who supplied Murray with the materials for his genus.

Having now adduced what I esteem conclusive evidence in support of the opinion I advanced above, that Murray's genus is spurious, and that of Cambessides founded on it, is most unnatural, as associating species that never can combine generically : while Roxburgh's, is a strictly natural genus including several nearly allied species, and moreover, probably referable to a natural order different from more than half of the species referred to it under the name of Stalagmitis by Cambessides, I consider myself fully justified in continuing to adopt the generic name Xanthochymus (even though opposed by the highest Botanical authorities) until careful examination of the original specimen, with reference to the elucidation of the discrepancies I have indicated, shall have proved, that such actually exist in that specimen. If they do exist, then the fault is not Murray's and his name must of right be adopted with an amended charac- ter, excluding the numerous species of Garcinia brought under it by Cambessides : if they do saot, Roxburgh's genus, which as it now stands is strictly natural, claims the preference.


 * One of those received from Mrs. Walker.