382 Neue Litteratur. 



Macgregor saw 35 miles up on the Mambare-River this same Musa. 

 In reference to this his Excellency wites me under date 15 th December, 

 1895: „1 had a sperimen brought on board the Merrie England, where 

 I invited Mr. W. Fitzgerald to study it. He undertook to send you 

 his description of it. I enclose a sketch of the fruit by Mr. Winter. 

 The bunch of fruits would have weighed nearly 1 cwt. It is not edible. 

 The seeds are used for making beads. It is a fine handsome plant." 



From Mr. Fitzger ald's notes, forwarded by him from Cooktown 

 on the 7 th February, 1896, and now given with some alterations in the 

 organographic words, I extract as essential the following: „I did not 

 collect the specimens of the Banana, which grow on the Mambare-River. 

 Mr. Butterwort h on the request of Sir William Macgregor brought 

 a spike on board. Height 15 — 25 feet. Stem stout. Leaves 8 to 10 feet 

 in length, 2 — 3 feet acro.ss. Spike (thyrsoid raceme) pendulous, 3 1 / 2 feet 

 long by the same (in largest) circumference (as regards the fruit masses 

 seen). Bracts broadly ovate (very acute according to Mr. Winter 's 

 delineatiou) 9 — 12 inches long, bright-green. 



Flowers numerous, 3 /4 — 1 inch in length, white, the lobes of the calyx 

 firm, linear with sharply recurved margins; corolla-lobes small, membranous ; 

 stigma tritid; fruit about 3 inches long by l x /2 inches in diameter, outside 

 pale-yellow ; pulp whitish, streaked with purple. Seeds 24 — 28; testa 

 bony, black. Albument mealy, bitter. The fruit is not eaten by the 

 natives, known to them by the name Tubi. 



From a necklace, made of these seeds and transmitted by the 

 Lieutenant-Governor, may be added, that the seeds attain the length of 

 half an inch and are offen semi-ovate in form. The necklaces are called 

 by the Autochthones gudugudu. Mr. Winter's drawing (of much reduced 

 size) indicates the flowers and fruits forming a total mass of ovate-conic 

 form with crowded bracts. 



M. Fitzalani, as here recognized, differs from M. calosperma already 

 in the comparative paucity of flowers at least within some of the bracts 

 and in pulpless fruits with much smaller seeds. M. Hülii, wich through 

 Mr. Berthoud is now known also from the Johnstone-River, is more 

 widely separated by still more gigantic size, by a raceme erect at least 

 during flowering time, as well illustrated in Sir Joseph Hooker's 

 Botanical Magazine, 7,401 (1895), by its longer and less acute bracts, by 

 yellowish ilowers, by proportionately broader fruits with yellow pulp and 

 smaller seeds. 



M. Sesmanni (Gardeners Chronicle, third series, Vol. VIII, p. 182 

 [1890], with a xylogram from a photogram by His Excellency Sir John 

 Thurston) belongs also to the series of species with erect inflorescence, 

 but may perhaps be identical with M. Feld of Tahiti and New Caledonia, 

 as suggested in the Kew Index. I have not succeded to identify 

 M. calosperma with any of the thirty-tive congeners recoided by 

 Mr. Baker in the „Annais of Botany", Vol. VII, and in Dyer's Kew 

 Bulletin for 1894. 



Should on fourther access to ampler material the Musa, brought under 

 extended notice now, prove specifically distinct from Mr. Maclay's 

 plant, then it is to bear the name of Sir William Macgregor. 

 Attention may yet be drawn at this apt opportunity to a Musa of extra- 

 ordinary ornamental value, to which Dr. Warburg refers (in Professor 

 Engler 's „Jahr-Buecher", XIII, 274), with totally red leaves, cultivated 

 by aborigines in New Britain, but indigenous to tbe Solomon-Islands. It 

 may only be a variety of some well-known species, but is wanting in 

 Australiau gardens like elsewhere yet. 

 Roze, E., Le Geum rivali-urbanum. (Bulletin de la Societe botanique de France. 



T. XLII. 1896. p. 273—279.) 

 Rydberg, P. A., Notes on Potentilla. II. (Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical 



Club. Vol. XXIII. 1896. p. 259—265.) 

 Schweinfurth, Gr. ? Sammlung arabisch-äthiopischer Pflanzen. Ergebnisse von 

 Reisen in den Jahren 1881, 1888, 1889, 1891 und 1892. (Bulletin de l'Herbier 

 Boissier. Appendix II. 1896. p. 179—210.) 



