200 MR. D. MORRIS ON THE PRODUCTION OF SEED IN 
all the character and peculiarities of the parent plant. In the 
West Indies the chief variety cultivated is the Bourbon or 
Otaheite cane. This is also widely cultivated in Mauritius, and 
under other names it is the favourite variety in the East Indies 
and Polynesia. 
At the Jamaica Botanic Gardens in 1884 there were in all 
sixty varieties of sugar-canes under experimental cultivation, and 
these were readily distinguished by the foliage, by size, eolour 
and character of stem, and by general habit *. 
The flowering panicle (without the hollow stem) varies from 
2 to 3 feet t. The numerous spikelets are arranged in pairs, one 
being sessile, and the other stalked, surrounded by a dense ring 
of long, white, straight, spreading hairs, arising immediately 
below, and coming away with the spikelets. All the spikelets ex- 
amined were one-flowered and hermaphrodite. The single purple 
pale enclosed in the upper glume is present or sometimes 
reduced to a film. The red lodieules vary from two to three, and 
are either truncate or 2-3-lobed. The yellow stamens were fully 
developed, and in a few instances the pistil was rudimentary. 
The upper part of the bifid purple stigma is large and densely 
plumose. The caryopsis, where present, is free and enclosed 
within the pale and glumes; it is about 47 inch long, 4; inch 
wide, elliptical-oblong, smooth or finely striated, flesh-coloured, 
and surmounted by the persistent bases of the style. The albumen 
is nearly white, subtransparent. The embryo is lateral, one- 
sixth the length of the caryopsis. In germination, the plumule 
and radicle emerge without the cotyledon (Plate XXXIII. 
fig. 5). 
[Norr.—Sinee this paper was read I have received, through 
the kindness of Dr. van Eeden, Director of the Colonial Museum 
at Haarlem, a copy of “ Mededeelingen van het Proefstation 
Midden-Java te Semarang, over suikerriet uit zaad door 
Dr. Franz Benecke, met 23 figuren.” Semarang, G. C. T. van 
Dorp & Co., 1889. In this a very complete account is given of 
observations made in Java, which have undoubtedly to a great 
extent anticipated those made at Barbados and described above. 
* Jam. Botanical Depart. Report, 1884, pp. 31-84. 
t According to Munro (Journ. Linn. Soc. vol. vi. p. 36), the specimens marked 
by Linnzus himself Saccharum Officinarum are not the true sugar-cane but 
Erianthus japonicus, Beauv. 
