388 МК. С. Е. М. SWYNNERTON ON 
Shelley), four sunbirds (Nectarinia arturi, P. L, Scl., Cinnyris chalybaus, 
Shelley, Cinnyris leucogaster, Vieill., and Cyanomitra kirki, Shelley), a 
bulbul (Pycnonotus layardi, Gurney), and two warblers (Prinia mystacea, 
Rüpp., and Sylvia simplex, Lath.). 
In Erythrina more strongly perhaps than in any other species came out 
the fact that whether a tree would be subjected to the infliction of short cuts 
(and consequent discriminative pollination by the subsequent utilizers of the 
short cuts) depended primarily on if it happened to be included for the 
time being in the “ beat " of individual birds that specially resorted to such 
short cuts. Moreover, observations in two successive seasons on E. Нитеапа 
showed that exclusion of particular trees at one period is no guarantee that 
they have been, or will be, excluded permanently from the operation of such 
probably selective influences. 
К. OBSERVATIONS ON LEONOTIS MOLLISSIMA, Gürke. 
An erect herb growing often in masses in grass jungle such as occurs in 
glens and on the outskirts of forest. It is conspicuous by its height (as 
much as 8 or 9 feet) and by its bare upper stem, varied at the nodes after the 
manner of a poodle’s legs with the large, nearly spherical verticillasters. 
Each of these is a ball, consisting of a closely-packed mass of (eventually in 
some cases up to three hundred, or even more) long spiny calyces, radiating 
from and concealing the twelve or fifteen sharply downturned flowering axes 
from which they spring. The latter nearly hug the stem and tend to turn in 
towards it below, at their growing point. Only at a single level (roughly 
speaking) will opened corollas usually be found at any one time. Above this 
row the calyces and their projecting spines are already becoming dry and 
stiff, and in the uppermost rows will even have ripened their seeds. Below, 
a few rows of yet undeveloped buds, and finally some down-pointing bracts, 
fill the space between the flowers that are out and the main axis of the plant, 
and complete the under surface of a spherical * cheval de frise” that must, 
one would suppose, act rather as a deterrent to would-be honey-robbers 
amongst, at any rate, the shorter-billed birds *. 
The flowers are greatly visited by sunbirds, particularly, on the outskirts 
of the Chirinda Forest, by Cinnyris olivacina, Gadow. In the *Jihu," a 
large grass-jungled tract of the Portuguese East-African district of Mossurise, 
the Leonotis is immensely abundant, and during a stay there in 1906 I found 
the flowering verticillasters frequented greatly by bulbuls (Pyenonotus 
* An entomophilous species, Pycnostachys urticifolia, Hook., has an elongated cheval-de- 
frise arrangement on a different plan, and is quite possibly thereby protected to some extent 
from illicit entry by the various species of Xylocopa and Podalirius, which seem to be its 
chief visitors at Chirinda. 
