BY E. HAVILAND. 1173 



If a bud, just before it expands, be opened, the anthers may be 

 seen attached to the almost hair-like portion of the filament ; and 

 forming a close tube round the style, which at that time is only 

 level with them, although it subsequently passes through them, 

 and grows to a considerable length beyond them. Upon the style 

 there are sveral large glands and these secrete a viscid fluid causing 

 the pollen, which has already escaped from the anthers, to adhere 

 to it. The style ends in a stigma of three lobes which at this time 

 are closed, the stigmatic surfaces being inside, so that the pollen 

 that has been deposited can have no fertilising effect upon the 

 flower. Soon after the anthers have thus shed their pollen, as a 

 rule, they disappear, by what means, I am at present unable to say. 

 My first impression was that they were carried away by insects 

 with some pollen still in them. Our friend Mr. Deane however, 

 who has rendered me very great assistance in the study of this 

 plant, suggested, that becoming detached they simply fall out of 

 the corolla by gravity. I am not able to satisfy myself that this is 

 the case ; because, if it were so, I should expect the anther always 

 to be detached at the connective. I find however that this is not so ; 

 but that on the contrary, although sometimes so detached, tbey are 

 more frequently so by the rupture of the thinner portion of the 

 filament at various points ; and moreover I find that when the 

 filament itself is so broken, the remaining portion always seems to 

 have recoiled, as though from a violent rupture. I do not think 

 the anthers fall from mere gravity, for the flower, although so 

 fragile, is generally quite erect when expanded, becoming pendant 

 only as it closes, thus imprisoning the anthers at the very time 

 when it could fall out by gravity. On this account I have searched 

 for the debris of anthers in the bottom of the corolla but have 

 have found it only in exceptional instances. 



I think, however, another suggestion of Mr. Deane's a very happy 

 one, and likely to be the solution of the difficulty. To explain this, 

 I must repeat, that when the bud first opens the anthers and the 

 thin portions of the filaments lie closely round the style, and are to 

 some extent cemented to it by the viscid secretion from its glands. 

 From that time the style grows very rapidly, passing far beyond 



