62 MR. G. BENTHAM ON AUSTRALIAN PROTEACE®. 
as can be judged by dried specimens, the stigmatic point still 
dry and small, and the cells of the anthers still almost closed and 
retaining all their pollen. 
In Adenanthos the moist collecting end of the style with its 
stigma is enclosed in the anther-cylinder, the anthers discharge 
their pollen in the bud, and the limb is forced open elastically by 
the straightening of the long style, as in the curved-flowered Gre- 
villeas ; but the stigma is better protected, being contained within 
a slit in the style-end, which is always closed in the bud. In most 
species where the anthers are all equal and perfect, the style-end 
is terete and oblong or fusiform, with the stigma within two ter- 
minal teeth, the slit continued only a little way lower down 
on one side. In A. obovata (Plate I. fig. 8) the upper anther 
is barren, the style-end is oval and flat, the upper face or back 
opposite the barren anther is dry and smooth, the front or lower 
face moist and covered with pollen when the bud is ready to open; 
the stigmatic slit runs down the centre quite to the base, but is 
protected by two raised margins or lips firmly closed in the bud. 
When the flower opens, the very long style straightens witha 
jerk that shakes off the pollen from its end; and then the slit 
opens to receive the pollen jerked from other flowers, or perhaps 
brought to it by insects coming to feed on its surface. 
Agastachys (Plate IL fig. 10) has a stigmatic arrangement 
which I do not quite understand. The flower is straight and re- 
gular, the filaments and lower slender part of the style are very 
short; the anther-cylinder is long and regular, all the anthers 
being perfect and normal, dichas their pollen in the bud, 
but the enclosed style-end is quite unilateral. The back or upper 
side is straight and smooth, plainly showing a division to about 
the middle into two lobes, distinct although erect and contiguous, 
whilst the front is a large, thick, oblong, spongy mass, showing 
faintly a groove or slit down the centre, at least towards the 
upper end. I have often found this spongy mass closely retaining 
small pollen-grains, but have not been able to ascertain from the 
dried specimens examined what part of it is really stigmatic—very 
possibly the inside of the slit; but of that I bave no proof. 
The bidentation or bifurcation of the style-end in Adenanthos 
and Agastachys may be one of the grounds on which some bota- 
nists have established a theory that the gynecium of Proteace® is 
bicarpellary, as they also suppose it to be in Laurines; but the 
frequent obliquity of the stigma, the arrangement of the ovules 
