140 BOTANY OF CONGO.
exactly the habit of Riviiia octandra, and all of which agree with that plant, as well as Avith several others belonging to the order, in the very minute pellucid dots of their leaves.
Pctivcria and Seguicria may therefore form a sub-division of Phytolacege And another section of this order exists in New Holland, of which the two genera differ from each other in number of stamina as remarkably as Petiveria and Seo-uieria.
o
Of the jMonocotyledonous orders, the first on which I have any remarks to offer, is that of
PALM^. The collection, however, contains no satis- factory specimens of any plant of this family except of FAceis r/Hweensis, the Maba of the natives, or Oil Palm, which appears to be common along the whole of this line of coast. In Professor Smith's journal it is stated that a single plant of the jNIaba Palm^ was cut down, from which ]\lr. Lockhart informs me that both the male and female spadices preserved in the collection were obtained. This fact seems to decide that Elseis is monoecious, which, in- 45C] deed, Jacquin, by whom the genus was estabhshed, concluded it to be, though from less satisfactory evidence." It was first described as dioecious by Ggertner, whose ac- count has been adopted, probably without examination, by Schreber, Willdenow, and Persoon.
In Sir Joseph Banks's collection, however, from which Gsertner received the fruits he has described and figured, and where he may be supposed to have likewise obtained all the original information he had on the subject, there is no proof of the male and female spadices of Elseis guineensis l)elonG;ino: to different individnals.
Gaertner has fallen into a still more important mistake respecting the structure of the fruit of Elseis, the foramina of whose putamen, which are analogous to those of the
^ Maba is, perhaps, rather applied to the fruit than to the tree: Emha being, according to Mcrolla, the name of the single nut, and Cachio tliafc of the entire cluster: for the Palm itself, he lias no name. Vide Picccwdo BeJaz. p. 122.
= Hist. SCn-p, Am-r.p. 281.
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