72 NATURAL HISTORY. 



Of four specimens of D. dorippus from Aden, now in the Society's collection, 

 two exhibit this dash of white. On the other hand, collections of butterflies 

 caught among the luxurious vegetation of Khandalla or Matheran generally 

 contain specimens with a depth of colour never mot with on the plains. 



But the strangest instance of the effect of an arid, sandy country on ani- 

 mal colour, if it was really an instance, was a mungoose which I repeatedly 

 saw at Kharaghora, but did not secure. It was apparently the common 

 mungoo e of Bombay (H. Griseus),* but the tip of its tail, instead of being 

 blackish, was white. A golitary " sport " like this has not much significance 

 by itself, but it becomes suggestive when we remember that the desert fox of 

 Gutch Qeucopus) differs from the common Indian fox in this very point that 

 its tail is tipped with white instead of b!ack. E.H. A 



BOTANICAL NOTES. 



ON AN INSTANCE OF FRUCTIFICATION IN A STAMINIFEROUS 



PLANT, CARICA PAPAYA. 



By Surgeon-Major G. Bainbridge, I.M.D. 



The PapayacecB form a small order of three or four genera and 25 or 30 

 species only, not very distantly related to the cucumbers. The species are 

 all tropical, and several inhabit S. America, of which the plant under notice 

 is supposed to be a native. 



Oarica Papaya is the best-known individual of its order, and has excited 

 much interest owing to the presence in its tissues of Papain, an alkaloid 

 or principle having the property of digesting animal substances, and service- 

 able, therefore, as a medicinal agent. 



As is well known, the plant is normally dioecious and one of the most 

 conspicuous examples of this marital arrangement. You will all have 

 distinguished the male, with its long-stalked panicles of small yellowish 

 flowers, from the female or pistilliferous tree, with its much larger, 

 whitish, rather campanalate flowers, which are closely arranged around the 

 trunk and branches, under the shelter of the leaves, and, having very 

 short stalks, are nearly sessile. 



I was not aware until recently that this arrangement was ever departed 

 from. But in January last year (1884) I was surprised to find at Dhar- 

 war, in the garden of a house I had just entered, a male Papaya tree 

 bearing fruit upon its long pendent stalks. 



On examination I found its flowers to resemble the typical male ones in 

 every respect, except in the presence of a minute ovary in at least some 

 of them. 



By April the fruit had grown to a considerable size, so that some of them 

 measured ten and thirteen inches in circumference; and, what was more in- 

 teresting, they contained numbers of ripe black seeds about three-fourths 



* Probably H. Fervugineus, Sind species, the tail of which is lighter coloured normally.— 

 B. A- S. 



