258 Dr John Davy on the Eggs of Birds. 
remark, in conclusion, that I can offer their results only as 
approximations, the sources of error being so many, and of 
these not the least, the difficulty of ascertaining how long 
the eggs had been laid. All that I examined, however, 
appeared to be fresh; none of them bore marks of having 
been sat on, judging from the total absence of the vascular 
membrane.* 
Description of the Fruit and Seed of Clerodendron Thom- 
sone. By Professor Batrour. (Plate V.)f 
In the Transactions of the Society for 1862, I described 
a Verbenaceous plant which had been transmitted from Old 
Calabar by the Rev. W. C. Thomson, and which I named 
Clerodendron Thomsone. At that time the plant had 
flowered (fig. 2) in the Botanic Garden, but it had not per- 
fected fruit. It has now ripened its seeds, and they have 
germinated in the hot-houses (fig. 1). I therefore com- 
plete my description of the species by giving a few de- 
tails as to the fructification. The style in the young state 
is terminal, and the four achenes are concrete, so as to ap- 
pear as a syncarpous tetracarpellary ovary (fig. 4). As the 
carpels advance in growth they separate, and the style falls 
off. The young fruit then appears as four green-coloured 
achenes, partially united and surrounded by the large per- 
sistent calyx, which has changed from a white to a pinkish 
hue (fig. 3). On cutting across the four achenes at their 
junction, we observe on the inner surfaces a bright red 
cellular coat (fig. 7). When ripe, the achenes assume a 
shining black colour externally, and the red cellular cover- 
ing becomes much enlarged, and by its growth separates 
the achenes completely, which ultimately appear as four 
distinct seed-vessels, covered on their upper surface (which 
* Those eggs in which this membrane appeared were laid aside. One of 
these was the Corncraik’s; in it the vascular area had just become distinct ; 
its vessels contained florid blood, the corpuscles in which were of an unusual 
magnitude, some elliptical, some circular without a nucleus ; the elliptical of 
largest size were about 57, inch in diameter by yo'o5- 
t Read before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 9th July 1868. 
