225 
CCCCIV.—MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 
The Flora of British India.—Botanists will congratulate Sir Joseph 
Hooker on the completion of the sixth volume of his great work, the 
first part of which was published 22 years ago. e enormous amount 
gaged in similar labour. In this case the difficulties are Pase 
pices by the very numerous pub icanon dealing with fragments of 
the India Flora, often from highly divergent views; to say nothing of 
the literature on the vegetation of the contiguous countries. e 
collection, collation, and digestion of this immense, scattered literature 
upon, for since the crei ef Ros Enumeratio, half a century 
since, there has been no critical synopsis of the plants of this order. 
Hence = elaboration of tlie India species pene the examination and 
comparis the species of the world, at least in the case of many of 
the large ut generally dispersed genera. 
Clar 
Cypere The present part carries the work down to the end of 
the Eon biacec. 
rican species of Musa.—Musa livingstoniana, Kirk, and 
proboscidea, Oliver. These two species of Musas belong to the sub- 
genus Physocaulis of Baker, characterised by bottle- -shaped stems and 
inedible fruits. M. prises was described by Sir John Kirk, 
.C.M.G., 9 is n. rn. ix., p. 128, from the mountains of 
Equatorial Africa. In habit it is o c Marea from Musa Ensete, 
but the seed is much smaller (only one-third of an inch in diam.), tuber- 
cled, with a depressed hilum, keat ck by prominent edges. In the 
there is a necklace of similar seeds brought by 
Barter from Sierr M. ea, Oliver, is figured and 
described in ZZooker's Icones Plantarum, i. 1777. The stem is four 
times the height of a man. The plant is known only from seeds and 
photographs obtained from Sir John Kirk. Its habitat is poe to 
be the hills of Ukami, about 100 miles inland from Zanzibar. This 
species is remarkable for the extreme length of the rachis of the panicle, 
In Sir John Kirk’s plant this drooped down and eventually become so 
elongated as to reach nearly to the und. he seeds are about 3 in. 
long, with only a small hollow at the hilum. M.  Seobositifea has not 
yet been under cultivation in this country. 
