872 ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLYCOTYLEDONY, 



My first successful attempt to collect seedlings resulted in the 

 acquisition of ten rather advanced examples of P. nutans. Four 

 of these had four cotyledons, four had five, but the other two 

 were anomalous inasmuch as one, with four cotyledons, had one 

 of these bipartite; and the other, also with four cotyledons, had 

 two of them in a similar condition. This kind of aberration, 

 resulting in transitional forms of so much significance in the 

 aggregate, seems to have escaped the notice of the Baron, or, at 

 least, he does not mention it; and I myself have not noticed it 

 in embryos. The condition is one which may easily be over- 

 looked until the cotyledons have grown, when it is usually 

 readily observable. More that ten per cent, of the total number 

 of seedlings which I have examined, presented some phase of a 

 more or less incomplete division of one, sometimes two, or rarely 

 even three of the cotyledonary members. It may vary in amount 

 from a notch up to almost complete separation. Two seedlings 

 illustrating the occurrence of one or more incompletely divided 

 cotyledons of this character are shown in Plate xxxv., figs. 1-2. 

 For the sake of brevity I shall speak of all such anomalies as 

 bipartite cotyledons, irrespective of the amount of the separation 

 (that is, whether the cotyledons are notched, bifid, cleft, or all but 

 completely separated). I think it is not altogether impossible that 

 some of these anomalies may have been entitled to be regarded 

 as cases of partially fused, or connate cotyledons. 



With the exception of the six species of which only a single 

 fruit was available, the Baron does not state how many embryos 

 were examined in any case; nor does he indicate, as the result of 

 actual observation, any proportion in which the numbers quoted 

 \>y him may be expected to occur. 



The object of the present paper is to supplement the Baron's 

 observations in so far as these relate to the species of Persoonia 

 to be found in the neighbourhood of Sydney, and on the Blue 

 Mountains, from a study of seedlings, and, whenever it was 

 possible, of a considerable number of them; and likewise to 

 furnish some photographic illustrations of a series showing the 

 variation in the number of the cotyledons met with. 



