422 Linnaan Society. 



Sheffield, and that belonging to Henry Ricketts, Esq., at the Grove, 

 Brislington, near Bristol. The Sheffield plant has now flowered 

 thrice. Its first cone, produced in England, is preserved in the 

 Museum at York ; its second belongs to the Royal Botanic Society 

 in the Regent's Park ; its third appeared this year, and, that it might 

 be suitably displayed, the whole plant was transported to York last 

 summer and was there publicly exhibited. It is now taken back 

 to Sheffield. It appears that this male was purchased by the late 

 Earl of Derby, formerly President of the Linnajan Society, about 

 A.D. 1825, together with the female already noticed, which is 

 a noble specimen, still preserved at Knowsley, and which bore fruit 

 in 1850. The Brislington specimen has been in the possession of 

 its present owner about half a century, and may be between fifty and 

 sixty years old. In 1847 it raised a cone or spike 58 c. (i. e. 23 in.) 

 long, which is agreeable to the ordinary size and form of this 

 production ; and now it has raised a second, but with a remarkable 

 anomaly in its development. This is not half the length of its 

 predecessor, and, instead of being drawn to a point, is curtailed and 

 terminates abruptly in a tuft of barren scales, resembling those, 

 which, as intimated above, always precede the rise either of a crown 

 of leaves or of a fruit-bearing cone. A check in the development 

 of the cone appears to have been sustained, preventing the further 

 prolongation of its axis, and at the same time causing its scales to 

 be no longer dilated and antheriferous. 



Macrozamia spiralis. 



Mr. Yates next exhibited a small, but perfect s])ecimen of the 

 cone of a male plant, which he lately imported from Sydney. This 

 is probably the first time that a Macrozamia has produced a cone in 

 this country. Together with the lecent cone Mr. Yates showed 

 also two old specimens, which had been sent with the living plant by 

 W.S.MacLeay,Esq.,F.L.S., and which that gentleman obtained near 

 his own residence at Elizabeth Bay. One of these two specimens 

 is very remarkable in consequence of being double. At the top of 

 a peduncle of the usual size and appearance are fixed two equal, 

 parallel and perfect male cones. Mr. Yates showed, thatsome approach 

 to this double formation is occasionally found in the genus Encepha- 

 lartus, inasmuch as the axis of the cone is sometimes bifid near 

 the summit. 



It was also remarked, that the peduncle of Macrozamia bears 

 leafy appendages, and that these have not been found in any other 

 recent genus, but are very conspicuous on the peduncles of the 

 fossil Zamites gigns, which is found in the Oolitic strata near Wliitby. 



Read some " Observations on the parasitic habits of Rhinanthus 

 Crista-galli, and its injurious effects on the growth of Barley." By 

 Joshua Clarke, Esq., F.L.S. &c. 



These observations were made during the last summer in the 

 parish of Debden, in the county of Essex. The field contained four 

 acres of barley, the soil a stiffish clay ; the Rhinanthus was growing 

 in patches at diff'erent parts of the field, some of which were much 

 larger than others, and occupying at least half the surface, by which 



