28 NEILGHERRY PLANTS.
The principal peculiarity of this order lies in the stamens, the filaments of which
are much dilated at the base and adhere by their margings, forming a cup, which incloses
the ovary. This peculiarity has led to their being placed at a considerable distance from
Celastrinee, though in reality very nearly related. The two Indian genera are separated by
three well marked points of structure. In Hippocratea the anthers open across the apex,
the fruit is capsular, and the seed are winged. In Salacia the anthers open longitudinally,
the fruit are baccate, and the seed wingless. They also differ in habit, in the former the
flowers are panicled, in the latter, fascicled in the axils of the leaves.
Of the genus Salacia De Candolle described 12 species in 1824 ; between that date and 1842, 19 were added to the list, and the one here figured makes twenty, being equal to an increase of 160 per cent in twenty years. The number of new species throughout the vegetable kingdom generally, discovered in that time, certainly does not equal that average, though I believe it may with perfect safety be estimated at from 70 to 80 per cent. A most extraordinary fact, as affording a conclusive example of the very engrossing influence this most fascinating science is capable of exerting over the human mind, to have called forth such an astonishing amount of mere animal exertion, exclusive of the dangers surmounted and privations endured by its votaries, in the prosecution of their favourite pursuit. Linnæus in 1760 knew about 8,000 species, and estimated that 10,000 would comprise the flora of the world, 68 years after in 1828, Sprengel defined, in his species plantarum, 60,000, and now in 1845, descriptions of not fewer than 100,000 are scattered through our Botanical literature, and probably fully 20,000, still undescribed species, already exist in the Herbaria of Europe. At this rate, I believe, we may at a moderate computation, estimate the flora of the world at over 200,000 species.
SALACIA.
Calyx 5-cleft. Petals 5, inserted between the torus and the calyx. Stamens 3, inserted on the top of the torus or between the torus and ovary: filaments flat, distinct : anthers adnate 2-celled; lobes divaricating at the base, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary 3-celled ovules 2 or more in each cell. Style short. stigma obsoletely 3-lobed. Fruit indehiscent, fleshy, often 1-celled from abortion. Seeds solitary in each cell, wingless, covered with pulp.-Shrubs or small trees. Flowers in axillary corymbs, or more frequently, from the abortion of the common peduncle, on simple 1-flowered pedicels arising from a small axillary tubercle; rarely (ever ?) in axillary dichotomous panicles.-W. and A. Prod. p. 104.
The species of this genus are for the most part rambling shrubs with numerous small aggregated axillary flowers and several with large fruit. The seed of this species and of our S. oblonga are large, fleshy masses without any appearance of cotyledons or radicle, so that their true structure, whatever that may be, will require to be made out by causing the seed to vegetate, a method which I neglected to adopt at the time of obtaining the specimens and am now unable to state what it is.
SALACIA MACROSPERMA (R. W.) a diffuse, rambling shrub; leaves oblong, elliptic, acuminated, corracious, glabrous: flowers numerous, fasicled, short pedi- celled: calyx 5-lobed fringed with rusty coloured hairs petals ovate, obtuse, broad at the base: ovary 3-celled with 2-superposed ovules in each: fruit irregularly ovate, few seeded: seed ovoid conferu- minate without a conspicuous radicle.
Jungles about Sisparah flowering, and at the same bearing full, grown fruit in April.
This species seems nearly allied to my S. verrucosa but wants the warty stems, and has a ciliated, in place of glabrous, calyx. The plants, besides, when compared, seem quite distinct, though the differences are not easily stated in words. The structure of the anthers and ovary amply distinguish it from my S. multiflora; in this the anthers open longitudinally, in that transversely here the ovules are two super posed in each cell, there they are numerous, forming two rows.
