504 STUDIES IN SEEDS AND FRUITS 



(44) Terminatia Catappa, p. 327. — A dry fruit weighing lOO grains 

 would be thus constituted : — '- 



Skin and fibro-suberose material . • 57*5 per cent. 

 Endocarp . . . . . 38*0 „ 

 Seed 4-5 „ 



lOO'O 



{45) Theobroma Cacao, p. 325. — For very extensive materials supplied 

 to me by Mr Anstead, superintendent of the Botanic Gardens, 

 Grenada, see Note 15 (p. 482). 



NOTE 29 (p. 436). 



On the growth of the embryo in the drying seed of Crinum. 



One often finds references to the vivipary of the seeds of Crinum ; 

 and in this connection the reader should read what Goebel says on this 

 matter in his Organography of Plants (ii. 618). It is noteworthy that 

 this habit is associated with the absence of seed-coats. But the most 

 remarkable feature is not that there is no rest-period, but that the 

 embryo is able to continue its growth uninterruptedly under condition^ 

 that generally determine that period. In fact, as in the acorn (see 

 p. 434), germination takes place in the drying seed. This again is not a 

 new fact ; and those who have read Rendle's Classification of Flowering 

 Plants, 19045 will remember the figure (after Van Hall) there given 

 (i. 306) of " a dry seed of Crinum capense germinating on the edge of 

 a board." 



Some moist fleshy seeds of a species of Crinum, taken from the plant 

 at the end of December, were allowed to dry on my table in Jamaica. 

 At the end of January I was surprised to find that they had lost only 

 1 9 per cent, of their weight. This tardy drying of seeds in such an 

 unprotected state led me to examine one or two of them, when I found 

 that the embryos were much stouter and about double the weight of 

 those in the seeds freshly gathered. On gth February I packed them 

 away with other seed-collections, and on examining them in England 

 on 2nd April, nearly half of the seeds were germinating. Five weeks 

 of this interval had been passed in the tropics. The other seeds I 

 examined at the end of April, four months after they had been gathered ; 

 and although they had lost 57 per cent, of their original weight and 

 displayed no external signs of germination, the embryos were eight 

 times as heavy and correspondingly larger than when the seeds were 

 collected. Much of the albumen had been assimilated ; but, unable to 



