NOTES ON MYRMECODIA. 191 



Although in the second edition of his Census (1886) Mueller adopts 

 this opinion so far as the Queensland plant is concerned— the 

 locality of North Australia is omitted from this edition — -it seems 

 to me more probahle that the Australian plants are to be referred 

 to M. Beccarii, under which species I place the plant collected by 

 Banks. This plant, described by Sir Joseph Hooker in Bot. Mar/. 

 t. 6883 (1886), was imported by Messrs. Veitch from Brisbane in 

 1884, "with the information that it was found in the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria, and is extremely rare there." 



It is strange that a g^nus so remarkable should have been dis- 

 covered in Australia nearly a century before any record of its 

 occurrence in that continent should have been published in any 

 scientific work; and it may be wondered that the passage in 

 Hawkesworth's Voycujes — derived, like so much that is of interest 

 in the collection, from Banks's Journal — should not have attracted 

 the attention of botanists. The passage in the Journal, as pub- 

 lished last year under the editorship of Sir Joseph Hooker, is as 

 follows : — 



"A third sort [of ant] nested inside the root of a plant which 

 grew upon the bark of trees in the same manner as mistletoe. The 

 root was the size of a large turnip, and often much larger; when 

 cut, the inside showed innumerable winding passages in which 

 these animals lived. The plant itself throve to all appearance not 

 a bit the worse for its numerous inhabitants. Several hundreds 

 have I seen, and never one but what was inhabited ; though some 

 were so young as not to be much larger than a hazel nut. The 

 ants themselves were very small, not above half as large as our red 

 ants in England; they sting indeed, but so little that it was scarcely 

 felt. The chief inconvenience in handling the roots came from the 

 infinite number ; myriads would come in an instant out of many 

 holes, and running over the hand tickle so as to be scarcely 

 endurable. Kumphius has an account of this very bulb ai.id its 

 ants in vol. vi. p. 120, where he describes also another sort, the 

 ants of which are black" (p. 304 : August, 1770). 



At the time this note was written, and indeed for long afterwards, 

 Rumphius's was the only description of these remarkable plants; 

 and Banks's observations are the only ones I know between the dates 

 of Piumphius's Ilurtus Ainhoinensis (1750) and Jack's establishment 

 of the genus Mtjrmecodia in 1825 {Trans. Linn. Soc. xiv. 122). It is 

 thus the more to be regretted that Solander's carefully drawn-up 

 description should never have been published, especially as the 

 nature of this "nidus germinans" had long puzzled botanists. 

 "Tali piante rimasero per i Botanici un enigma per molti anni, e 

 Linneo non seppo a qual classe riportarlc, no dette loro nomo di 

 sorta. Stickman die scrisse una dissertazione sull' IJcrhariuni 

 Ainboinensc {Ainom. Acad. iv. 136j citando la tav. lv del vol. vi del 

 Rumphius, dice di cssa semplicemente 'Nidus germinans ex formieis 

 monstruosus bulbus'" (Beccari, I.e. 81). 



It may be of interest to print Solander's description as it appears 

 in his MS. I'lanUc Nuvcn Jlollandia: — a careful transcript by himself 

 of his rough notes, which we also have in the Department of Botany. 



