(Footnote.  My knowledge of this remarkable structure of Xanthorrhoea is chiefly derived from specimens of the caudex of one of the larger species of the genus, brought from Port Jackson, and deposited in the collection at the Jardin du Roi of Paris by M. Gaudichaud, the very intelligent botanist who was attached to Captain De Freycinet’s voyage.)

OBS. 2.

I have placed Kingia in the natural order Junceae along with Dasypogon, Calectasia and Xerotes, genera peculiar to New Holland, and of which the two former have hitherto been observed only, along with it, on the shores of King George’s Sound.

The striking resemblance of Kingia, in caudex and leaves, to Xanthorrhoea, cannot fail to suggest its affinity to that genus also.  Although this affinity is not confirmed by a minute comparison of the parts of fructification, a sufficient agreement is still manifest to strengthen the doubts formerly expressed of the importance of those characters, by which I attempted to define certain families of the great class Liliaceae.

In addition, however, to the difference in texture of the outer coat of the seed, and in those other points, on which I then chiefly depended in distinguishing Junceae from Asphodeleae, a more important character in Junceae exists in the position of the embryo, whose radicle points always to the base of the seed, the external umbilicus being placed in the axis of the inner or ventral surface, either immediately above the base as in Kingia, or towards the middle, as in Xerotes.

OBS. 3.

ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIMPREGNATED OVULUM IN PHAENOGAMOUS PLANTS.

The description which I have given of the Ovulum of Kingia, though essentially different from the accounts hitherto published of that organ before fecundation, in reality agrees with its ordinary structure in Phaenogamous plants.

I shall endeavour to establish these two points; namely, the agreement of this description with the usual structure of the Ovulum, and its essential difference from the accounts of other observers, as briefly as possible at present; in tending hereafter to treat the subject at greater length, and also with other views.

I have formerly more than once* adverted to the structure of the Ovulum, chiefly as to the indications it affords, even before fecundation, of the place and direction of the future Embryo.  These remarks, however, which were certainly very brief, seem entirely to have escaped the notice of those authors who have since written on the same subject.

(Footnote.  Flinders Voyage 2 page 601, and Linnean Society Transactions 12 page page 136.)

In the Botanical Appendix to the account of Captain Flinders’ Voyage, published in 1814, the following description of the Ovulum of Cephalotus follicularis is given:  Ovulum erectum, intra testam membranaceam continens sacculum pendulum, magnitudine cavitatis testae, and in reference to this description, I have in the same place remarked that, “from the structure of the Ovulum, even in the unimpregnated state, I entertain no doubt that the radicle of the Embryo points to the umbilicus."*