198 Babu Nagendranatlia Yasn— Copper plate grant of Vic^varupa. [Dec. 



to stamens becoming converted into Carpellary organs; not always, 

 however, for at times there is an increase in number of carpels without 

 any alteration of stamens or of other organs. But the presence of a 

 complete axially situated orange within another has not, I believe, been 

 recorded. 



Though very uncommon, the condition just detailed, which is the 

 second way in which the existence of a fruit within a fruit may be 

 explained, is nevertheless not novel. An excellent account of a pre- 

 cisely parallel case has been given by Dr. Masters {Gard. Chron. i, 1882, 

 p. 11, f. 1), who records the phenomenon as occurring in Tropidocarpum 

 an American Crucifer. In that instance a small ovary occupied, as in 

 the present case, the very extremity of the flower-stem within the 

 normal seed-vessel. And it is possible that the condition of affairs in 

 what is known as the St. Valery apple may be of the same nature, 

 though another explanation has been offered of the structure in this 

 case and it must be admitted that there, as in the case of the Love-apple 

 wliere too an adventitious series of carpels is occasionally produced, the 

 adventitious one is intimately combined with the primary series. 



As showing the rarity of the condition it may be mentioned that 

 the Tropidocarpum example appears to have been the first that Dr. 

 Masters, our greatest authority on teratological questions, had met 

 with ; if any similar condition has since been recorded, the record has 

 escaped my attention. 



In the Gardener s Chronicle instance only one accessory carpellary 

 whorl is present ; here there are two. Partly on this account therefore, 

 and partly owing to the rarity of the condition, but chiefly because the 

 phenomenon is here so obvious and ihe abnormal organs are so tangi- 

 ble — the accessory ovary in this Papaya measures three inches in 

 length, that of Tropidocarpum only as many lines — it seems worth 

 while recording this instance of pleiotaxy of the gyncecium. 



The Philological Secretary exhibited two photographs of the inscrip- 

 tion on a rock in the Brahmaputra forwarded by Mr. E. A. Gait. 



The following papers were read : — 



1. Discovery of a copper plate grant of Vigvarupa, one of the Sena 

 Icings of Bengal.— By Babu Nagendranatha Vasu. 



(Abstract.) 



In tlie village Madanapada, Post Office Pinjari, Parganah Kotali- 

 pada of the Faridpur District, a peasant while digging his field found a 



