No. 12.— 1860-1. ] PROCEEDINGS. 1860. 



V 



The Rev. Mr, Boake submitted the following resolution : — 



That the following gentlemen he requested to form a Corresponding 

 Committee, for the purpose of entering into communication with Scientific 

 Societies in Europe and elsewhere, viz :— 



The Honorable the Chief Justice, 

 Mons. Grimblot, 

 Mr. Capper." 



Seconded by Mr. Lorenz, and carried. 



Mr. W. Ferguson exhibited a dwarfed specimen of Melia Azedarach, 

 Lin., and a plant Holcus Sorghum, making a few remarks respecting them. 



The genus Melia consists of trees, the M. Compdsita, or Lunumidella 

 of the Sinhalese being well-known as a fast-growing and tall tree, the 

 timber of which is so light, that it is generally used for outriggers to the 

 fishing canoes, while the species of which a small specimen was exhibited, 

 is well-known throughout Ceylon, as a tree generally from 10 to 20 feet 

 in height, and commonly called the "Flowering Margosa," having large 

 branched panicles of beautiful lilac -coloured flowers. 



The small specimen shewn by Mr. Ferguson was taken up and dried 

 early in May past, and was one of several plants raised from seeds sown 

 only three months previously, (all of which struggled for existence during 

 the late dry weather.) but only this one was observed to flower then ; but 

 about a fortnight ago, six or seven more produced a single flower each in 

 the same manner, some of them very large and partly monstrous. 



The dried specimen shewn had still the cotyledons on ; when it 

 flowered these were g-an-inch from the ground, a small pair of opposite 

 leaves 1 inch, and another 1| from the ground, while eight alternate leaves 

 occupied other 2 inches of the stem, and then came the last leaf about \ 

 of an inch higher in the axil of which grew the sessile flower,— the whole 

 height of the plant being only 3g inches, the root, a single one, being 

 about 5 inches long. 



Mr. Ferguson considered this plant a good illustration of the principle, 

 that flowers and seed vessels are merely modified forms of leaf. 



In good soil and in ordinary weather, the plant in questiou would have 

 become a small branching tree, but here its growth was arrested, and 

 true to its vegetable instincts, if such a term can be used, it made desperate 

 efforts to preserve its species by producing a flower. This flower occupies 

 the place of the central bud of the plant ; it has no calyx, but the top leaf, 

 in the axil ["of which it rests* lias also departed from its normal form, 

 having divided and grown round the (lower, so as to form an involucre 



