Mr. W. King on certain Genera of the Class Palliobranchiata. 83 may occur in all the species, and may be as general a character of the order as the beautiful markings in the cuticle of the petals are well known to be. Other orders have been examined which are said to have a near affinity with Geraniacea, but none of the plants examined, be-longing to the orders Balsaminacece, Tropaolaceae, Oxalidacece or Linacece, manifest anything like the appearances described — in fact no clustered crystals have been met with ; but in taking an order said to be somewhat more remote, Malvaceae, I find in all the examples that I have examined of British and foreign plants, precisely a similar disposition and number of crystals. If the leaves constituting the involucrum of Althtea, Malva and Pelargonium be carefully examined, a few crystals will occasionally be found, but altogether not in the slightest to be compared with the number or disposition of those in the sepals. If constitutional peculiarities, besides structure, have any in-fluence with systematists, then Malvaceae ought probably to be placed somewhat nearer Geraniacea j and when we consider the monadelphous condition of the stamens of both orders and their tendency in Monsonia to be indefinite, and the carpels of some plants of Malvaceae to have but one seed, exalbuminous, and to be disunited, and the parts of the flower of the same numbers, there appears to be some reason, as far as the structure of the reproductive organs is concerned, to bring the position of these orders in closer relation. The sepals of most plants are favourable organs for meeting with crystalline bodies, either of the solitary, acicular or clustered varieties. The sepals of Prunella vulgaris and Dianthus caryo-phyllus exhibit well the solitary cubic crystal beneath the cuticular cells ; the Fuchsias contain a great quantity of the acicular kind, and the sepals of the Strawberry exhibit the clustered variety as seen in the Geraniacea. Thus it appears that there is something peculiar to the sepals of certain plants that disposes the contents of their cells to form crystals which does not belong to the neigh-bouring organs. 50 Wellclose Square, July 4, 1846. XL — Remarks on certain Genera belonging to the Class Pallio-branchiata. By William King, Curator of the Museum of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. [Continued from p. 42.] Pentamerus. The beak of Pentamerus is furnished with an aperture of the form of a triangle, the base of which corresponds to the hinge
BioStor
