BY ALEX. G. HAMILTON. 51 



diameter. When ripe it is soft and purplish-red (fig. 7). The 

 flowers are solitary in the axils, but frequently grow out from the 

 trunk of the tree, a characteristic that belongs to others of the 

 same natural order, as Wallace says of a PoIyaHhia in Borneo, 

 that the slender trunk was completely garlanded with star-shaped 

 flowers (5). Ficus aspera and Castanospermum australe have the 

 same habit, which Wallace thinks belongs for the most part to 

 tropical trees. 



The flower opens in the early morning, and closes about 5.30 

 p.m. on the same day, the ring of staminodia and stamens dropping 

 off entire the same night or early next day. These fallen flowers 

 are very peculiar in appeai'ance, quite unlike any blossom I have 

 ever seen before. They resemble small sea-anemones more than 

 anything else I can think of, and have a general uncanny appear- 

 ance. The thin expanded bases of the filaments cause the stamens 

 to tremble and wriggle in a way very suggestive of animal life. 

 They have a very strong rich penetrating scent with reminiscences 

 of other odours. Sometimes, as Bennett says above, it was like 

 Magnolia fuscata, then one got a whiff" of decaying pine-apple, 

 ^nd at times there seemed to be an intermingling of stale fish. 

 A single flower in a room was quite sufficient to till it with the 

 perfume, and after handling the flowers, the smell clung persist- 

 ently to the fingers. In previous years I had found stray blossoms 

 at various dates from November to February, but in 1896 all the 

 plants I could find flowered from the ISth to the 25th December, 

 and after the latter date I could not find a single flower. 



Having read what Brown and Bennett wrote about the insects 

 frequenting the blossoms, I watched a tree near my residence for 

 some time before it flowered, and specially searched for the 

 Curculios, but could find none. On the 18th December I found 

 two flowers open, but for a moment did not recognise them as 

 flowers, as they were covered with a crawling mass of beetles. 

 Yet the evening before I had examined the tree closely (it is a 

 shrub of about eight feet in height) without discovering a single 

 insect. When the branches were jarred, the beetles dropped off 

 the flowers to the ground. Later in the day I again examined 



