i865 i88i] F. MULLER 349 



trimorphic, like Lythrum, but he has tried hardly any Letter 674 

 experiments. 1 



I am particularly obliged for the information and 

 specimens of Cordia? and shall be most grateful for seed. 

 I have not heard of any dimorphic species in this family. 

 Hardly anything in your letter interested me so much as 

 your account and drawing of the valves of the pod of one 

 of the Mimosese with the really beautiful seeds. I will send 

 some of these seeds to Kew to be planted. But these 

 seeds seem to me to offer a very great difficulty. They do 

 not seem hard enough to resist the triturating power of the 

 gizzard of a gallinaceous bird, though they might resist 

 that of some other birds ; for the skin is as hard as ivory. 

 I presume that these seeds cannot be covered with any 

 attractive pulp ? I soaked one of the seeds for ten hours in 

 warm water, which became only very slightly mucilaginous. 

 I think I will try whether they will pass through a fowl un- 

 injured. 3 I hope you will observe whether any bird devours 

 them ; and could you get any young man to shoot some and 

 observe whether the seeds are found low down in the intes- 

 tines ? It would be well worth while to plant such seeds 

 with undigested seeds for comparison. An opponent of ours 

 might make a capital case against us by saying that here 

 beautiful pods and seeds have been formed not for the good 

 of the plant, but for the good of birds alone. These seeds 

 would make a beautiful bracelet for one of my daughters, if 

 I had enough. I may just mention that Euonymus europccus 

 is a case in point : the seeds are coated by a thin orange 



1 Hildebrand's work, published in the Monatsb. d. Akad. d. Wiss. 

 Berlin, 1866, was chiefly on herbarium specimens. His experimental 

 work was published in the Bot. Zeitung, 1871. 



2 Cordiaceas : probably dimorphic. 



3 The seeds proved to be those of Adenanthera pavonina. The 

 solution of the difficulty is given in the following extract from a letter 

 to Miiller, March 2nd, 1867 : " I wrote to India on the subject, and I hear 

 from Mr. J. Scott that parrots are eager for the seeds, and, wonderful as 

 the fact is, can split them open with their beaks ; they first collect a large 

 number in their beaks, and then settle themselves to split them, and in 

 doing so drop many ; thus I have no doubt they are disseminated, on 

 the same principle that the acorns of our oaks are most widely dissemi- 

 nated." Possibly a similar explanation may hold good for the brightly 

 coloured seeds of Abrus precatorius. 



