KALILi:slA AKNoLhI. 105
latter being subdivided into distinct lobes, as in many Orchic/eie, a family which Cz/finns also resend)les in the struc- ture of the seed, and probably in the mode of impregnation, though so widely different in almost every other respect.
It would certainly be ditlicult to reduce Rajjle-^hi to \\w. view^ here taken of the formation of the compound ovarium in these tw^o genera; and it may therefore, |)erhaps, be said, that although the structure of Jf//chiora, in one important particular, suggests or confirms the more probable notion of the composition of ovarium in llaj/lesia, as already stated,^ it is in other respects very distinct.
Another point, which in my former pa[)er I considered ■-vs doubtful, namely the seat or limit of the stigmata, is not even now satisfactorily established; for the slender processes forming the hispid tips of the supposed styles, which have so much the appearance of the ultimate divisions of stigma, are merely hairs of a very simple structure, and exactly resembling those found in other parts of th':^ column;
^ My confideuce in this hypothesis iespectiu» Rafjlesia is greatly lebseiied on cousidering the strucl uie of the female flower of a lately discovered species of the genus, namely, Rafjlesia Cuiuiugii or ^laiullana, in which the style-like processes terminating the column are much fewer in number, and so arranged as to form a single circular series of about ten, not very distant from the limb, with only from one to three processes wiihin it, which are placed near the centre, while the irregular cavities in the ovarium are evidently much more numerous, and in arrangement have no apjiarent relation to that of the supposed styles, there being as great conij)lexity in the centre as towards the circum- ference. These relations between styles and ovarial cavities seem, according to the ligures of RaJJleaia Paima, to be reversed in that sj)ecies, its styles being appaiently more numerous than the cavities of the ovarium; and as even in Rajjlcsia Anioldl their correspondence is far from obvious, it would seem that the number and arrangement of these processes alford no satisfactory evidence of the composition of the ovarium in any known species of the genus. Uut^ if the placentation of Rajflesia Anioldi and Cumin fjii. notwithstanding the objec- tions stated in the text (p. -lOi), be considered parietal, as Blumc has described it in R. Puliiui, and as from liis ligures it seems actually to be in BniaiiutHsia, there would still be no means of (ietermining the exact degree of com[)ositimi of ovarium in RalJlfHa; for in no species of the genus is there the slightest in- dication ailorded by the arrangement of cavities or ramilication of the assumed placenta^, to nuu*k any delinitc number of C()in|)onent parts, ^inniar objections apply with equal force to the adoption of that opinion which regards placenla- tiou as in all cases central or derived from the axis.
In conclusion, therefore, it may perhaps be said that R>i(flesia, in the structure both of ovarium and antherie, is not obviously reconcileable to any iiyimthesis hitherto proposed to account either for the origin or for a common type of the sexual organs of I'hjenogamous plants.
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