374 Transactions. — Botany. 



Being, unfortunately, obliged to be absent from home when the crop was 

 cut, I was unable to carry out my intended experiment of crushing and 

 sugar making, but I hope to do so next year. One of my sons crushed a 

 few stalks through a clothes-mangle, and boiled the juice down to the con- 

 sistence of syrup, forming, when cold, a stiff toffy (to the dehght of himself 

 and his schoolfellows), showing the large amount of saccharine matter in 

 the juice. This was from the Early Amber cane, which is much sweeter to 

 the taste on chewing it than the Honduras. 



I purpose planting one acre of Early Amber and half an acre of 

 Honduras about the beginning of November next, and any person desiring 

 to experiment on its growth in different soils and situations can have seed 

 of each variety by applying to Mr. Lavers, seedsman, Queen-street. 



Art. LV. — On an abnormal Groivth of Neiv Zealand Flax. 



By the Eev. Philip Walsh, of Waitara. 

 [Read before the Welli}igt07i Philosophical Society, 21st January, 1882.] 



On the 8th of August last, I found a very remarkable abnormal growth on 

 a flax-bush (Phormium tenax). On one of the flower-stalks, of which 

 there were three, the terminal bud had developed a perfect fan of leaves 

 about two feet long, which at the date mentioned were quite green and 

 fresh, the fan containing nine fully formed leaves, with a young leaf just 

 shooting up in the centre. 



The six uppermost lateral flower-buds had made the same abnormal 

 growth, though in a lesser degree ; two of them having formed small fans 

 six inches and four inches in length respectively, and the other four having 

 apparently done the same, though the leaves had fallen off, the greatly 

 elongated stalks only being left. 



The lower buds had flowered and seeded, some of the seed-pods still 

 remaining. 



The whole of the stalk was still green, in spite of the lateness of the 

 season — August being a month in which, it is almost superfluous to state, 

 all ordinary flax-stalks are dead and dry. 



The two remaining stalks had made a similar growth to that described. 

 They were, however, dead and withered when I found them. 



The bush was one of a considerable patch of ordinary flax growing on 

 the bank of the Papatiki, a small stream in northern Taranaki. It was 

 growing in a clayey soil, about 300 or 400 yards from the sea beach. 



