lg THE GENUS CHOC US. 



of the matured corm exhibited on Plate A. The seedling corm becomes fully 

 matured, and reaches the flowering-state at the end of the second or third year 



after germination. 



The seed, under natural conditions, germinates near the surface of the ground; 

 but the fully' matured corm is rarely found at a less depth than three inches 

 (0.075 Metre'), and often occurs four or five (0.125 Metre) inches deep. The small 

 one-year-old corm is always found near the surface, and it is evident that in the 

 annual process of reproduction, it possesses some power of descending deeper into 

 the ground. This would, however, seem inconsistent with the mode of reproduction, 

 in which the new corm is found on the summit of that which it replaces; but 

 that such a power is possessed was strikingly illustrated in the above named 

 experiments on germination. The seeds were sown half an inch (0.013 Metre) 



Fig. II. 



deep (a, a) in flower-pots five inches (0.125 Metre) deep in August, 1879, and were 

 left undisturbed till September, 1884; they were then turned out, and the corms 

 were found to be arranged in the manner represented in Fig. 11. They were 

 nearly all at the bottoms of the pots (c, c,) closely pressed against the drainage 

 materials, and over each corm was a string (b, b, b,) of empty corm-tunics, occurring 

 at intervals of about three-quarters of an inch (0.019 Metre), and representing the 

 annual downward progress of the corm. 



The process of the descent of the corm from near the surface to the necessary 

 depth is difficult of explanation, and it must be viewed as one of many self-protective 

 phenomena in plant-life, the modus operandi of which we do not understand. 



Contemporaneously with the maturity of the seed, the foliage attached to the 

 new corm, and the roots attached to the remnant of the previous year's old corm, 



