26 ON A MODE OF GERMINATION IN THE MANGO. 
a number of adventitious roots. The inner surface (fig.3) is concave, 
and offers no unusual appearance ; the plumule in this instance is 
short, thick, fleshy, conical, and gives off, not from its summit, but 
from its side, some distance above the attachment of the cotyle- 
dons, three leafy shoots, one of which is small and but slightly 
developed, and another is divided into two branches a short di- 
stance above its origin. The radicle has a similar appearance to 
that of the first-mentioned seed. 
To sum up the peculiarities presented by these specimens, 
there is, first, the entire absence of one of the cotyledons in both 
instances; next, the peculiarity of the plumule, in the one case 
giving off no shoot at all, in the other giving rise to three shoots 
from its side; and, lastly, there is the production of adventitious 
roots from the * scooped-out ” portion of the cotyledon. 
I do not know any instance of plumules presenting the peculi- 
arities just mentioned, nor have I been able to find on record any 
case of adventitious roots springing from the cotyledons them- 
selves, though there is no physiological or anatomical reason why, 
under certain circumstances, adventitious roots should not be 
developed in such a situation. Irmisch indeed describes similar 
rootlets arising from the petiole of the cotyledon in Bunium cre- 
ticum and Carum Bulbocastanum*. | 
The scooping out of the lower half of the outer surface of the 
cotyledon may not be an unusual occurrence in mango seeds, 
though it is certainly not invariable. Griffith describes the coty- 
ledons of this plant as oblique at the base, with half of their outer 
surface wrinkled, half smooth, sometimes auricled, sometimes not, 
sometimes of different sizes. The plumule he describes as “ stalked 
and well-marked.” Gaertner figures seeds of this plant with appa- 
rently lobed cotyledons, the lobes being, as Reinwardtt shows, really 
separate seed-leaves belonging to nw embryos; but the de- 
scriptions given by these writers by no theans apply to the cases I 
have attempted to describe; nor does Alexander Braun, in his 
recently published memoir on ‘ Polyembryonous Plants,’ among 
which mention is made of the Mango, describe anything like them. 
* Flora, 1858, pp. 33-42. 
f Reinwardt, Nov. Act. Acad. Car. Leop. Nat. Cur. 9-24, 4to, 12, 1, 37. 
REFERENCE TO THE WOODCUTS. 
The figures are one half the size of the originals; Nos. 2 and 3 refer to the 
outer and inner aspect of the same seed respectively, but the details of the 
foliage, etc., are omitted in No. 3. 
