400 Mr. Bowman on the Parasitical Connection 
which I believe to be new to botanists, I venture to lay them be- 
fore the Linnean Society. ha 
I regret that my attempts to investigate the germination of 
the seeds and the character of the cotyledons have not yet been 
fully satisfactory. The two last seasons I sowed the seeds be- 
tween dead leaves, in pots filled. with the soil in which the plant 
grows, and placed them in its native situation: but in both in- 
stances they failed to germinate; at least they still remain in- 
active. Neither have I been able, by dissection, to trace any 
division of the cotyledons. However, in one of my attempts to 
ascertain the parasitical connection of the plant, I detected among 
the mass of roots, when cleared from the soil, what proved on 
examination to be a minute embryo. This I have represented, 
both of the natural size and also in two positions highly mag- 
nified, at. Tae. ae Hagel a, b, C. Though the otiam 
between c our r Welsh plant; and that figared in English Poisi, tab. 50, und the dee 
scription in English Flora, vol. 3. p. 128; to which I may add, that all the specimens 
which have afforded the materials of the present paper, have the upper lip of the co- 
rolla entire, or very slightly notched; while in the authorities just quoted, it is repre- 
sented as deeply cloven. In Curtis’s figure (British Entomology, vol. 4. tab. 160) i it is 
undivided. The height of the flowering stems, in favourable situations, is even more 
gigantic than I have stated in Loudon’s Magazine, being sometimes 15.or even 18 
inches, bearing from 50 to 60 flowers; on one I counted 63. The subterranean stems 
-are often from 2 to 9 feet long, surrounded at intervals of 5 or 6 inches by thick 
irregular whorls of cylindrical, often forked’ branches, closely beset with scales; and | 
it is often in these parts so swollen and distorted, that it can with difficulty be traced 
through the labyrinth. [ts usual habit is horizontal, producing at the upper whorls, 
1, 2, or 3 flowering branches, which are the only parts that ever emerge into day; and 
it sometimes happens, that the whorls which bear them one season throw up none the 
next, and vice versá. New branches are added to the subterranean stems every season, 
and the extremities of the old ones are lengthened out by fresh shoots, both being 
clothed with a delicately white and succulent herbage, which is permanent and never 
renewed. TAB. XXII. Fig. 2. is decisive as to their perennial character, the smaller 
scales just above the crown of the root (a) being evidently those of the embryo plant. 
unfortunately 
