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 586 PLANTS JAVANIC.E RARIORES.

while his Bpithema, my Aikinia, also belonging to Cyr- tandracece, he refers to Primulacece.

It is somewhat remarkable that none of these writers should have adverted to the affinity of this new family to Besleriacece of Richard and De Jussieu, now generally named Gesneriacece. This affinity, however, did not escape Dr. Yon Martins, who in his elaborate account of Gesne- riacece, published in 1829, 1 considers Cyrtandracece as sufficiently distinct from that order in the absence of albu- men and in having an inverted embryo : the latter character he states on. the authority of Mr. Don, who, in employing the term " Embryo inversus," can only have intended to express its direction with respect to pericarpium ; such at least is the real structure of those genera which he referred to his Didymocarpea?, and it is certain that in the relation of embryo to hilum both families entirely agree.

Dr. Von Martius also notices the difference in the order of abortion of stamina between these two families, which is no doubt generally true, but admits in each of at least one exception ; Sarmienta in Gesneriacece, agreeing with Cyrtandracece in having only its two anterior or lower stamina antheriferous : and in tjiis latter family Aikinia or Ujjit/iema, which, as in the greater part of diandrous Ges- neriacece, has its two posterior or upper stamina perfect.

There is indeed another, and that a very remarkable, distinction noticed in the position of the lobes of the stigma, which in Gesneriacece, according to Von Martius, are placed right and left in relation to the parts of the flower, and consequently opposite to the lateral parietal placentas; while in Cyrtandracece the lips of the stigma — for so it is necessary to express the fact in this family — are anterior and posterior, and therefore alternate with the lateral pla- centas ; the latter being the ordinary relation in unilocular ovaria, where the placentas and lobes, or rather lips, of stigma, correspond in number. This difference, however, even were it fully established, would hardly be available here as a technical distinction, several genera in each

1 'Nov. Gen- PL Bras.' iii. p. 72.

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