THE PROTEA TRIBE. 131 



minute flowers which are borne by some of them ; but 

 totally unknown in a wild state in Europe. It would 

 be easy to name some kind with which you might 

 make a personal acquaintance, by inquiring of your 

 gardener after Hakeas, or Persoonias, or Grevilleas ; 

 but you will probably prefer that I should in this 

 instance send you a copy of a drawing by Mr. Ferdi- 

 nand Bauer of one of the handsomest of the kind 

 found by him in New Holland, and named Sir Joseph 

 Baiiks^s Grevillea (Grevillea Banksii). 



The leaves of this plant, like those of the whole 

 tribe, are exceedingly dry and hard ; they are divided 

 into many narrow lobes, but this is not by any means 

 universally the case ; on the contrary, they are fre- 

 quently perfectly simple and undivided. The calyx 

 (Plate IX. 1.) is a long narrow tube, slit on one side 

 {^fig. 1*.), and turned down at the point so as to give 

 the border a very oblique and bagged appearance ; by 

 disturbing the bag with the point of a pin it will 

 divide into four concave lobes, each of which {fig. 2.) 

 allows an anther to nestle within its cavity. The 

 pistil consists of a long hard style, rather abruptly 

 bent above the middle, terminated by a thickened 

 one-sided stigma {fig. 1**. & 1* h.\ and arising from 

 a hairy one-celled ovary having a jagged scale at its 

 base {fig. 4. a.). This scale is one of the things 

 which used to be called nectary^ under the idea that 

 it was formed for the purpose of secreting honey or 

 nectar ; but that term is now abandoned. The style 

 is so long that you would wonder how it could ever 

 have been confined within the calyx ; and the stigma 



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