5 
who examined the latter established the fact that they were 
all destitute of embryos and that the roots sprang from the fleshy 
albumen from towards the top of the seed. All these rooting 
of the normal seedlings grew up is not stated. Bruant, a nursery- 
man of Poitiers, who also received some of Humblot’s seeds seems, 
hardly be any doubt that it is really spontaneous there; though 
as to its occurrence in the Zanzibar region it may be pointed out 
that Werth in his ‘ Vegetation der Insel Sansibar’ (p. 94 says, 
is frequently brought from the Comoros’ to 
from Dar-es-Salaam, that is on the inner edge of the extensive 
low level forest area which covers a great portion of Usaramo 
from the coast to near the meridian of Usungula. No specimens, 
however, have*come to hand from this region. Apart from this 
area the range of the species may be said to extend over a con- 
siderable portion of the east coast of Madagascar, and probably 
_ also over parts of the central regions of the island, over the 
Comoros and the coast of the southern part of the Zambesi delta. 
So far the status of this Cycas as a species has not been ques- 
tioned. In the first place, however, it will be expedient to decide 
the question of the name which should be given to it. Bruant’s 
name Cycas comorensis may be dismissed at once as unnecessary ; 
the decision lies only between C. Thouarsii of R. Brown and 
C. madagascariensis of Miquel. The plant is so generally known 
as C. Thouarsw that to replace this name by Miquel’s would be 
most inconvenient. Robert Brown’s designation has usually been 
treated as a nomen nudum and De Candolle says explicitly that 
it was published without description. Were this the case, those 
who accept the rules of the Vienna Code as binding will have 
to decide for C. madagascariensis. The case, however, appears to 
the writer to be this. R. Brown recognised that Petit Thouars’s — 
plant differs from the Indian plant which Linnaeus named Cycas — 
circinalis. But Brown did more than this: he contrasted the 
two species quite clearly (see Prodr. p. 347). While it is true 
that Brown did not formally describe C. Thouarsii, he referred to 
Petit Thouars’s memoir and implicitly stated the synonymy which 
technically would have been expressed thus: C. Thouarsii; syn. 
C. circinalis, Petit Thouars, non Linn., the synonym with its 
description and illustration doing duty for a fresh description — 
under the new name. It is impossible to contend that any 
[__* Bley, Deutsche Pionierarbeit in Ost-Afrika 1891; from quotation in 
Engler, Pflanzenwelt Ost-Afrikas, p. 172. 
