XVI. in 1791 to search for La Perouse. His specimens, 

 obtained near Cape Leeuwin, W.A., were in leaf only, and 

 judging by analogy, he named and figured them as Ruppia 

 untarctica in his Novce Hollandim Plantarum Specimen, ii., p. 

 116, tab. 264, published in 1806. Charles Gaudichaud, 

 botanist to Freycinet's voyage of discovery, 1817-1820, collected 

 the same plant at Shark Bay, W. A., and this time male flowers 

 were found and described (Voyage autour du Monde: 

 Botanique, p. 430, tab. 40, fig. 2). 



No further investigations seem to have been made with 

 regard to this plant for many years, until Mr. J. G. O. Tepper, 

 a Fellow of this Society, acting on the suggestion of Baron 

 von Mueller, collected specimens at Ardrossan, and gave the 

 result of his researches in two papers read before the Royal 

 Society in 1880, the first being entitled "Some Observations on 

 the Propagation of Cymodocea antarctica, Endl." (Trans. Roy. 

 Soc, S.A., iv., 1-4 and 47-49, plates 1 and 5). Mr. Tepper 

 does not appear to have found the male or young female flowers, 

 but the conclusion at which he arrived is, I think, justified by 

 the facts. It was "that the plant does not at all develop a 

 fruit proper, nor does the seed ever become dissociated from 

 its plant, but that the fertilized ovum at once germinates and 

 develops into a new plant, which at maturity is detached, and 

 begins an independent cycle of existence." The object of 

 the present paper is to supplement the observations made by 

 Mr. Tepper over thirty years ago. 



Mr. Tepper forwarded his paper and specimens to Pro- 

 fessor P. Ascherson, of Berlin, who replied that in the "fruits" 

 he could find "nothing of the organs of a pistillate blossom, 

 seeds," etc., and he considered the process to be purely one of 

 vegetative reproduction (Trans. Roy. Soc, S.A., v., 37). In 

 the same letter Ascherson states that he had seen one specimen 

 of the female flower submitted by Baron von Mueller. This 

 must have been a very young flower, and the fact that the 

 4-lobed comb is the final stage of the female flower was over- 

 looked. 



The theory of vegetative reproduction seems to have 

 been accepted by botanists ever since 1880. P. Ascherson, 

 speaking of Cymodocea antarctica in Engler and Prantl's 

 Natilrliche Pflanzenfamilien, ii,, 1, 195-6 (1889), summarizes 

 the supposed process as follow^s : — "An ordinary foliage leaf 

 [at the summit of a leafy shoot] is succeeded by a scale-leaf or 

 'comb-leaf,' whose median plane is transverse to that of the 

 foliage-leaf. To this scale-leaf are added other leaves in nor- 

 mal distichous succession. By destruction of its softer parts the 

 strongly developed mechanical tissue of the new comblike, 

 incised scale-leaf is set free ; beneath its insertion the end 



