Cæsalpineæ. Of this tribe, four species only occur in the collection. One of these is Bauhinia rufescens of Lamarck (Illustr. 329, f. 2.); another is Cassia (Senna) obovata, which, according to Dr. Oudney, grows wild in small quantities in Wady Ghrurbi.
Papilionaceæ. Twenty-six species of this tribe are contained in the herbarium, none of which form new genera, and the only two species that appear to be unpublished belong to Indigofera.
Alhagi Maurorum, or Agoul, is abundant in Fezzan, where it forms excellent food for camels.
Compositæ. Of this class, thirty-six species exist in the collection. The far greater part of these were found in the vicinity of Tripoli and in the Desert. All of them appear to belong to established genera, and very few species are undescribed.
Rubiaceæ. The herbarium contains only six species of this family, five of which, belonging to Spermacoce and Hedyotis, were found in Bornou and Soudan; the sixth, a species of Galium, near Tripoli.
Of Asclepiadeæ only three plants occur. One of these is a new species of Oxystelma, exactly resembling in its flowers O. esculentum of India, from which it differs in the form of its leaves, and in that of its fruit[113]. A species of Dœmia was found in the Desert; but the specimens are too imperfect to be ascertained.
Of Apocineæ, strictly so called, there is no plant whatever in the collection; and of Gentianeæ, a single species only of Erythræa.
Sesameæ. An imperfect specimen of Sesamum pterospermum, of the catalogue of Mr. Salt’s Abyssinian plants[114], is in the collection from Bornou.
Sapoteæ. The only plant of this family in the herbarium is the Micadania, or Butter Tree of Soudan, particularly noticed by Captain Clapperton. The specimen, however, is very imperfect, consisting of detached leaves, an incomplete fruit, and a single ripe seed. On comparing these leaves with the specimen of Park’s Shea Tree[115], in the Banksian Herbarium, I have little doubt that they both belong to one and the same species. Whether this plant is really a Bassia, is not equally certain; and the seed at least agrees better with Vitellaria paradoxa of the younger Gærtner, (Carpol. tab. 205.) than with that of Bassia, figured by his father, (de Fruct. et Sem. Pl. tab. 104.)
That the woody shell in the nuts of all Sapoteæ is really formed of the testa or outer membrane of the seed, as I have elsewhere stated[116], and not of a portion of the substance of the pericarpium, according to the late M. Richard and the younger Gærtner, is proved not only by the aperture or micropyle being still visible on its surface, as M. Turpin has already shown in one case, (Ann. du Mus. d’Hist. Nat. 7, tab. 11, f. 3.); but also by the course and termination of the raphe, as exhibited in the younger Gærtner’s figures of Calvaria and Sideroxylum, (Carpol. tabb. 200, 201, et 202.) and by the origin and ramification of the internal vessels.