44 JOURNAL, BOMB A Y NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. IX. 



three imbricated scales or bracts which are linear-lanceolate, tough, 

 fleshy, rose-coloured, mottled with green or purple spots. 



Spathe. — Is technically called " marescent" i.e., not actually falling 

 off before the spadix is perfected, but withering long before that time. 

 In size very large ; ovate ; 1 to 1\ ft. long ; very broad ; erect ; 

 acuminate; below, of fleshy substance, infundibular, convolute ; above, 

 membranaceous, campanulate, patulous, with undulate curled margins. 

 The convoluted part in its greatest circumference is about a foot and a 

 half ; externally, speckled with pale yellowish-greenish patches and 

 bright green dots ; internally, at the base it is purple with very thick 

 fleshy warts, which are thickest and deepest coloured near the scape, 

 and which become paler coloured and less dense as they approach 

 the mid-part of the infundibular portion. The mid-part is con- 

 spicuously greenish-yellowish, without any warts. The colour of the 

 undulate marginal portion is purplish or dark purple ; that on the under 

 or external surface is dull ; that on the upper or internal surface is 

 bright. 



Spadix. — Projecting distinctly beyond the spathe ; erect, thick, 

 club-shaped, almost half-way from below cylindrical and pistil-bearing ; 

 thence upward it is pear-shaped and thick, bearing anthers ; above this 

 part lies the apex (appendage or club) expanding in a globosely conoid 

 irregularly formed mass when young, which becomes fungating and 

 sinuously lobed as it matures. The texture internally is spongy, fibrous, 

 lacunose ; externally corrugated, brownish dark purple, resembling 

 soft leather with minute warts or projections alternating in regular 

 order with shallow depressions between. As the conoidal apex matures 

 into the more corrugated mass of sinuous small lobules they emit an 

 intolerably offensive odour of putrid flesh, inviting hordes of blue-bottles 

 and other large flies which cover the whole mass with their eggs ; and 

 the subsequent maggots, which thickly beset it for the next four or five 

 days, render the flower stalk as disgusting to the eye and nose as carrion. 

 I have already referred to this fact in my lecture on Indian Flowers 

 delivered before the Sassoon Mechanics Institute, Bombay, extracts 

 from which have already appeared in one of the previous numbers of 

 this Journal (Vol vii, Part 4, pp. 527, 528—1892). 



Flowers.— Unisexual ; the males on the middle third of spadix, 

 immediately below the appendage ; the females on the lower third or 



