Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 2G3 



Description Stem short, stout. Leaves (7 inches long, 4-6 lines broad 



at the base) crowded, subulate, spreading, deflexed in the upper half, ri- 

 gid ; above, when young, channelled, afterwards flat, of uniform dark 

 green colour, shining ; below rounded, glaucous, striated ; teeth aristato- 

 spinous, distant, spreading, straight or hooked backwards or forwards, 

 dark brown. Flower-stalk (2 feet high) elongated, erect, somewhat wool- 

 ly at the top, scaly, the scales woolly, adpressed, and clasping, below re- 

 sembling reduced suberect leaves, above less acuminated membranous and 

 marcescent. Flowers (about 12) scattered loosely near the top of the 

 stalk, without pedicels, arising in the axils of the scales, spreading, orange 

 coloured. Calyx 3-parted, segments rigid, concave, ovate, overlapping 

 at the base, adpressed, twice as long as the scales Corolla twice as long 

 as the calyx, trifid, triquetrous when fully expanded, nectariferous at the 

 base ; segments slightly unequal in breadth, rhomboid, elongated at the 

 base, spreading along the centre, compressed on the sides, somewhat un- 

 dulate, united at the base with the calyx into a fleshy mass. Stamens 6, 

 inserted into the corolla, but alternately in the centre of the segments 

 and towards the edge so as to be opposite to the sepals, subexserted ; fila- 

 ments broad, flattened, slightly tapering at the apex ; anthers bilocular, 

 sagittato-oblong, bursting along the front, attached at the bottom of the 

 sinus to the filament, and placed on the face of a broad connective; pol- 

 len granules minute, yellow, oblong. Pistils shorter than the stamens; 

 style trifid, segments twisted together, and towards the apex each on its 

 own axis, so as to give the linear stigma a spiral form. Germen oblong, 3- 

 lobed, lobes cohering in the centre ; ovules numerous, rounded, flattened 

 from being crowded above each other, attached in two rows within each 

 loculament to a central receptacle. 



We received this plant from the liberal conductors of the Botanic Garden, 

 Berlin, in 1832. It is very handsome, and flowered, for the first time, 

 in the stove of the Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, in June 1835. 



[Additional Plants in next Number, the Descriptions having reached too late 

 for insertion.] 



Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 



1835, %d February.*— Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, 

 K. C. B., President, in the Chair. The following communi- 

 cation was read : — 



On the History of the Arch. By Dr Traill. 



Dr Traill stated, as the result of a careful examination of the 

 passages in ancient authors, supposed to prove the early use of 

 arches by the Greeks, that we must abandon all hope of solving' 

 this disputed point, by a reference to those authors ; and he in- 

 stanced the danger of inferences from such uncertain data, by com- 

 paring the description of the Treasury of Minyas, given by Pausa- 

 nias, with the still remaining kindred edifice, the Treasury of the 

 Atridae at Mycenae. He also noticed the loose sense in which the 

 ancient Greeks employed the terms -^m^is, 'ec^t^ 



He next examined the evidence of the ancient use of arches, de- 

 rived from existing monuments. He shewed the existence of true 

 arched conduits in two very ancient Grecian edifices, the ruins of 

 the Temple of Apollo Didymeeus, in the territory of Miletus, and 



