1839.] Linnean Society. 41 



Read, " A Notice of a Plant which produces perfect Seeds without 

 any apparent action of Pollen on the Stigma." By Mr. John Smith, 

 A.L.S. 



The subject of the present notice belongs to the natural family of 

 Euphorbiacea, and has been cultivated for several years in the Royal 

 Botanic Garden at Kew, under the name of Saphim aquifoUum. It 

 is a native of Moreton Bay, on the east coast of New Holland, where 

 it was discovered by Mr. AUan Cunningham, who sent three plants 

 of it to Kew in 1829. A short time after their introduction the 

 plants flowered, and they proving to be all females, they were na- 

 turally passed over as belonging to a dioecious })lant, until Mr. 

 Smith's attention was particularly drawn to them by the fact of their 

 producing perfect seeds. They have annually flowered and matured 

 their seeds since, and notwithstanding the most diligent search and 

 constant attention no male flowers or any pollen-bearing organs have 

 been detected. Young plants have been raised at diff'erent times 

 from the seeds, and they bear so close a resemblance to their parents 

 that it is scarcely possible even to suspect the access of pollen from 

 any other plant. 



Mr. Smith considers the plant as the type of a new genus, which 

 he names Conlebogyne . It forms an irregularly branched, rigid, ever- 

 green shrub, of about three feet in height, with alternate, petiolate, 

 elliptical, mucronate, coriaceous leaves, having three large spinous 

 teeth on each side, and furnished with two small subulate persistent 

 stipules. The paper was accompanied by a young plant raised from 

 seed produced at Kew, and by a beautiful drawing of the parts of 

 fructification from the pencil of ]\Ir. Francis Bauer. 



Read also, " Descriptions of newly discovered Spiders." By John 

 Blackwall, Esq., F.L.S. 



This paper comprises descriptions of new species of Spiders, re- 

 cently discovered, and principally by the author himself, in the north 

 of England and Wales, and it must be confessed that the success 

 which has attended his labours in this department is greater than 

 could have been anticipated, no fewer than fifty-three species having 

 been added by him to the catalogue. Much of tliis success is to be 

 attributed to the fact of his attention having been chiefly directed 

 to those species which, on account of their diminutive size, require 

 the aid of optical instruments, of a high magnifjing power, for their 

 accurate examination. 



The genera to which the species chiefly belong are Drassus, CIu- 

 biona,Lycosa,Agelena, Theridmn, JValckenaera, Neriene and Linyphia. 



No. V. — Proceedings of the Linneax Society. 



