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VULG. Cadamb, Cadam.

LINN. Oriental Nauclea.

To the botanical description of this plant I can add nothing, except that I always observed a minute five-parted calyx to each floret, and that the leaves are oblong, acute, oppofite, and transversely nerved. It is one of the most elegant among Indian trees in the opinion of all, who have seen it, and one of the holiest among them in the opinion of the Hindus: the poet CA'LIDA's alludes to it by the name of Nìpa; and it may justly be celebrated among the beauties of summer, when the multitude of aggregate flowers, each consisting of a common receptacle perfectly globular and covered uniformly with gold-coloured florets, from which the white threadform ftyles confpicuously emerge, exhibits a rich and fingular appearance on the branchy trees decked with foliage charmingly verdant. The flowers have an odour, very agreeable in the open air, which the ancient Indians compared to the scent of new wine; and hence they call the plant Halipriya, or beloved by HALIN, that is, by the third RA'MA, who was evidently the BACCHUS of India.

22. GANDI'RA:

SYN. Samafht' hilà, Lavana-bhantáca.

VULG.

Lona-bbant; Ins; Sulatiyà.

LINN. SOLANUM. Is it the Verbafcum-leaved?

CAL. Perianth one-leaved, cup-form or belled? Obfcurely five-cleft, downy, pale, frosted, permanent. Divifions egged, erect, pointed, very villous.

COR. One-petaled. Tube very fhort. Border five-parted. Divifions oblong, pointed, expanding, villous.

STAM. Filaments five, most short, in the mouth of the tube. Anthers oblong, furrowed, converging, nearly coalefcent, with two large pores gaping above.

PIST. Germ roundish, villous. Style thread-form, much longer than

the ftamens. Stigma obtufe-headed.

PER. Berry roundish, dotted above, hoary, divided into cells by a fleshy receptacle with two, or three, wings.

SEEDS very many, roundish, compreffed, nestling.

LEAVES alternate, egg-oblong, pointed, rather wavy on the margin, delicately fringed with down; darker and very foft above, paler below with protuberant veins, downy on both sides, mostly decurrent on the long hoary petiols.

STEM fhrubby, fcabrous with tubercles, unarmed. Flowers umbel-fascicled. Corols white. Anthers, yellow. Peduncles and pedicels hoary with deciduous froft.

This plant is believed to contain a quantity of lavana, or falt, which makes it useful as a manure; but the fingle word Bhantáca, vulgarly Bhánt, means the Clerodendrum, which (without being unfortunate) beautifies our Indian fields and hedges with its very black berry in the centre of a bright-red, expanding, permanent calyx. The charming little bird Chatráca, commonly called Chattárya or Tuntuni, forms its wonderful neft with a leaf of this downy Solanum, which it fews with the filk-cotton of the Seven-leaved BOмBAX, by the help of its delicate, but sharp, bill: that lovely bird is well known by the Linnean appellation of MOTACILLA Sartoria, properly Sartrix, but the figures of it, that have been published, give no idea of its engaging and exquifite beauty.

23. SAMUDRACA:

SYN. Dhóla-famudra.

VULG. Dhol-famudr.

LINN. Aquilicia; but a new fpecies.

CAL. Perianth one-leaved, funnel-shaped, five-toothed, short, the teeth

closely preffing the corol; permanent.

COR.

COR. Petals five, egg-oblong, feffile, greenish; acute, curved inwards with a small angled concave appendage. Nectary tubular, fleshy, five-parted, yellowish; divifions, egg-oblong, doubled, compressed like minute bags with inverted mouths; enclosing the germ. STAM. Filaments five, smooth and convex externally, bent into the top of the nectary, between the divifions or fcales, and compreffing it into a globular figure. Anthers arrowed; the points hidden within the nectary, surrounding the ftigma; the barbs without, in the form of a star.

PIST. Germ roundish. Style cylindrick. Stigma obtuse.

PER. Berry roundish, flattened, naveled, longitudinally furrowed, moftly five-celled.

SEEDS folitary, three-fided, externally convex. Cymes moftly threeparted. Stem deeply channeled, jointed, two-forked. Peduncles alfo jointed and channeled. Fructification bursting laterally, where the stem sends forth a petiol. Berries black, watry. Leaves alternate, except one terminal pair; hearted, pointed, toothed; twelve or fourteen of the teeth fhooting into lobes; above, dark green; below, pale, ribbed with proceffes from the petiol, and reticulated with protuberant veins; the full-grown leaves, above two feet long from the apex, and nearly as broad toward the bafe; many of them rather targetted: this new fpecies may be called large-leaved, or AQUILICIA Samudraca. The fpecies described by the younger BURMAN, under the name of the Indian STAPHYLEA, is not uncommon at Crishna-nagar; where the peasants call it Cácajanghá, or Crow's foot: if they are correct, we have erroneously fuppofed the Cóing of the modern Bengalefe to be the Cácángi of the ancient Hindus. It must not be omitted, that the ftem of the Aquilicia Sambucina is also channeled, but that its fructification differs in many respects from the descriptions of BURMAN and LINNÆUS; though there can be no doubt as to the identity of the genus.

24. SO'MA

24. SO'MARA'JI:

SYN. Avalguja, Suballi, Sómaballicá, Cálaméshì, Crishnáphalá, Vácuchí, Vágujì, Pútip' halli.

VULG. Sómráj, Bacuchi.

LINN. Fetid PODERIA.

The character as in LINNAEUS, with few variations. Calyx incurved. Corol very fhaggy within. Style two-cleft, pubefcent; divifions contorted. Stem climbing, fmooth. Leaves oppofite, long-petioled; the lower ones oblong, hearted; the higher, egg-oblong; veined, with a wavy margin. Panicles axillary (except the highest), crossarmed. Flowers beautiful to the fight, crimson, with milk white edges, resembling the Dianthus vulgarly called Sweet William, but refembling it only in form and colours; almoft fcentless to those, who are very near it, but diffufing to a distance a rank odour of carrion. All the peasants at Crishna-nagar called this plant Somráj; but my own servants, and a family of Bráhmens from Tribéni, gave that name to a very different plant, of the nineteenth class, which I took, on a curfory infpection, for a Prenanthes.

25. SYA'MA':

SYN. Gópí, Sárivá, Anantà, Utpalafárivà, Gópá, Gopálicà, Gópavalli. VULG. Syámá-latá.

RHEEDE in Malabar letters, Puppál-vall.

CAL. Perianth, one-leaved, five-toothed, erect, minute, permanent. COR. One-petaled, falver-form. Tube, itself cylindrick, but protuberant in the middle with the germ and anthers; throat very villous. Border five-parted; divifions very long, lance-linear, fpirally contorted, fringed, clofed, concealing the fructification.

STAM. Filaments, if any, very short. Anthers, five, awled, erect, converging at the top.

PIST. Germ above, pedicelled, spheroidal, girt with a nectareous ring. Style threadform, rather awled. Stigma fimple.

PER. Capfule one-celled; one-feeded, roundish, hifpid.

SEED oval, very minute, gloffy.

Flowers raceme-panicled, greenish-white, very small, fcented like those of the hawthorn, but far fweeter; and thence the Portuguese called them honey-flowers.

Peduncles axillary, ruffet; pedicels many-flowered. Branchlets milky. Leaves oppofite, lance-oval, pointed at both ends, most entire veined; above dark green; below, pale. Stipules linear, axillary, adhering. Stem climbing, round, of a ruffet hue, rimmed at the infertion of the short petiols.

perma

The ripe fruit of this elegant climber, which CA'LIDA's mentions in his poem of the Seasons, has been seen by me only in a very dry state; but it seemed, that the hifpid appearance of the capfules, or berries, which in a microscope looked exactly like the burrs in VAN RHEEDE'S engraving, was caused by the hardened calyxes and fringe of the nent corols: the feeds in each burr were numerous and like black shining fand; for no fingle pericarp could be difengaged from it, and it is defcribed as one-feeded merely from an infpection of the diffected germ. Before I had seen the fruit, I thought the Syàma very nearly connected with the Shrubby APOCYNUM, which it resembles in the leaves, and in parts of the corol.

Five of the SANSCRIT names are ftrung together, by the author of the Amaracóf, in the following verfe;

Gópi s'yámá s'arivá fyádanantótpala farivá:

and his commentator obferves, that the last name was given to the Sárivá from the refemblance of its flowers to thofe of the Utpala, which I thence conclude to be a Menianthes; especially as it is always defcribed

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