MR. G. BENTHAM ON AUSTRALIAN PROTEACEA, 59 
grains crowded on the style, whilst the real stigma, whether 
within or above or below the anther-cylinder, is as yet imma- 
ture, dry, and evidently incapable of absorbing pollen. When 
the flower is quite ready to expand, the force which overcomes 
the cohesion of the valvate perianth-segments and anthers gene- 
rally bursts them asunder with more or less elasticity so as to 
promote the scattering of the previously loosened pollen, after 
which the liberated style matures its stigma and becomes ready 
to receive any pollen that may reach it from neighbouring flowers. 
The cohesion of the perianth-segments is generally stronger in 
their limb or antheriferous portion than in the tube, and more 
particularly so either at the tip or at the base of the limb at the 
point of insertion of the stamens, immediately under the base of 
the anthers. The ripe anthers, with the immature stigma buried 
in a mass of pollen, are thus kept in close confinement and inacti- 
vity, in some instances for a lengthened period. When the style 
by its growth at last succeeds in liberating itself, it is chiefly in 
two ways. In many of the straight regular-flowered species it 
will force its way straight through the end, separating the tips of 
the segments, which then roll back with more or less of elasticity 
to the base of the stamens or lower down. In many curved- 
flowered species the resistance opposed by the cohesion of the 
limb is greater, the style by its growth becomes more and more 
bent like a bow, breaks out through a lateral slit, and finally 
draws out its stigmatie end from the limb either by splitting it 
from the base upwards or by slightly opening it at the base only. 
It would appear that the extra force required by the style for this 
final effort is sometimes influenced by meteorological or other ex- 
ternal eonditions whieh may not always occur; for we often see 
in Banksia cones which have been long in flower, and have even 
ripened their seeds, the majority of the withered flowers with the 
anthers and end of the style still closely imprisoned in the closed 
limb. But then in those cones the majority of the ovaries have 
not ripened into fruits; and I believe that the perfect fruits always 
correspond to liberated styles; but this point requires further 
observation on the living plant. One thing appears certain, that 
there is no genus in the order where the stigma is longer kept 
smothered in a bed of pollen, whilst there is none where effective 
fecundation is proportionally more rare. In a cone of about a 
thousand flowers we often find not more than two or three dozen, 
and sometimes not one dozen, fully formed fruits. 
