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INTRODUCTORY. 



Yale cycad 220 represents a huge central stem weighing 133.2 kilograms, which 

 plainly bore three great low-growing branches nearly as large as the central stem 

 and projecting from it nearly at right angles ; but of these I have only been able 

 to find one among the other Yale specimens, namely, No. 264, weighing 83.4 

 kilograms, and thus indicating a total weight of nearly 400 kilograms. In certain 

 other instances from three to five branches were early formed, each of these growing 

 out more or less symmetrically as a large trunk, as in the existing Zamia. (See 

 plates xii and xiii.) The tendency in such cases was for the group to separate more 

 and more as time went on and thus break up the originally symmetrical central 



Fig. II. — Zamia vernicosa. ]'„. 



An exceptionally beautiful greenhouse example of branching in an existing cycad either as the result 

 of injury to the terminal bud or perchance the destruction of the apical meristem of the main axis 

 by cone growth. (In conservatories of Miss Helen Gould, Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson, N. Y.) 



woody zone into distinct segments corresponding to the several branches. One 

 beautiful example of this kind in the Yale collection consisted in four trunks of 

 quite equal size growing out obliquely ; but only three were recovered, although it 

 is certain the group was complete when first eroded out. 



A similar group of great interest is indicated by three trunks of C. Marshiana 

 collected by the writer at Minuekahta. Their discovery was led to in an unusual 

 manner. Some minute trunk fragments scattered about a small excavation showed 

 where a branch or, perhaps, several branches — uncovered by erosion — had been 

 earlier obtained by some one making a hasty and unskillful collection. Evidently 

 these were secured with the thought that they were isolated surface specimens, and 



