46 Remar'ks on the Natural order Cycadea. 



where to place it ; for we find it first arranged by him among the 

 Palms, and afterwards with the Ferns. It was not until the year 

 1807, after the suggestions of Ventenat, that the natural order of 

 Cycadeae was established, it having been first characterized by the 

 elder Richard, in Persoon's Synopsis Plantarum. 



C. revoluta, though of late years well known in the fine living 

 collections of England and the Continent, appears to have produ- 

 ced its flowers but rarely. The description and plate,* by Sir J. E. 

 Smith, taken from a specimen which flowered in the hot-houses of 

 the Bishop of Winchester in 1779, and the plant at Wentworth 

 House, mentioned as being in a state of inflorescence in 1829, by 

 Sir Wm. J. Hooker, and figured in the Botanical Magazine,f (both 

 of which notices are now considered imperfect in their views of the 

 structure of the stem and seeds,) are all that have come under our 

 observation. 



In Japan, the native country of this species, its curious fructifica- 

 tion is, we believe, renewed annually ; and the Japanese, who make 

 considerable plantations of it around their houses, are said to eat the 

 seeds and extract an inferior kind of sago from the pith or central 

 part of the stem ; whence it has received the name of Sago Palm, 

 although the true sago of the shops is the production of a very dif- 

 ferent plant, the Sagus Rumphii, Willd., which is a true Palm. 

 According to Dr. Hamilton,^ the flour used by the poorer natives of 

 Malabar, called Indum Podi, is prepared from the seeds of a species 

 of Cycas, dried and beaten in a mortar. 



For a long time, those who examined this group of plants seem 

 to have been more occupied with their external appearance, as ex- 

 hibited in the fine pinnated foliage and simple trunk of Cycas, than 

 with any minute investigation of the real nature of the reproductive 

 organs. When, however, the plants of this order were attentively 

 examined as to their germination, their mode of inflorescence, and 

 especially as to the nature of those singular bodies denominated the 

 female flowers, new light was thrown upon their characters and affin- 

 ities. To that learned and most accurate botanist, Robert Brown, 

 we are mainly indebted for those views which explain the true struc- 

 ture of Cycadese, and establish an intimate relationship with the ap- 

 parently very different group of plants, known under the name of Co- 

 niferse. These views were presented to the world in a paper read be- 

 fore the Linnsean Society of London, in 1825, on the " structure of 



* Trans. Linnsean Soc. of London, vol. vi, p. 313. 



t Bot. Mag. tab. 2963. t Travels in the Mysore, vol. ii, p. 469. 



