268 Transactions of the Boyal Society of South Africa. 
scopic slides smeared with glycerine for about an hour at distances varying 
from 3 feet to ten paces from male cones, and in every case was success- 
ful in finding pollen grains, most being caught by a slide exposed on the 
top of an ant-heap about 3^ feet high. 
The distances from male cones are not great, but in the area where these 
observations were made male cones were growing 8 inches, 26 inches, 
37 inches, and 54 inches from females, and it is thus clear that wind is able 
to convey the pollen of Stangeria sufficiently far to insure the pollination 
of a fair number of cones. The fact that most pollen was found on the 
slide exposed on an ant-heap would indicate that the pollen is carried well up 
into the air, and is therefore capable of being disseminated over a wide area. 
At the time of the pollination the ovulate cones are from 5 to 7 
inches high, and have a circumference of 7^ inches. In all ordinary cir- 
cumstances, and except where the surrounding grass has grown very rank, 
these dimensions are sufficiently great to insure an open way from above 
if not from the sides. The macrosporophylls are much larger and fewer 
in number than the microsporophylls, and are arranged in a series of 
six (rarely five or seven) vertical rows with ascending imbrication. In 
contrast to what has been observed in the case of Encephalartos, the macro- 
sporophylls separate and open out at the time of pollination, the openings 
pointing upwards. The lower sporophylls in some cones open out con- 
siderably more than the upper. The whole arrangement seems adapted 
to catch pollen settling down out of the air rather than borne horizontally 
by wind currents. A careful study of the female cone at this stage will 
show that the pollen which falls on the smooth adaxial surface of any one 
sporophyll has much less chance of reaching the ovules of that sporophyll 
than it has of coming in contact with those which form the right and left 
of the two sporophylls immediately below it. 
The sporophylls remain open for five or six weeks. No insects have 
been observed to visit the female cone, and none have been found in the 
seeds at any stage of their development. In some years a fair number of 
cones set seeds, and these are evenly distributed throughout the cone. I 
have records of only two cones in which the fertile seeds were confined 
to one side of the cone. One was found growing slantwise out of a 
hollow and in such a position that pollen, whether settling down from 
above or driven sidewise, could only reach one side. Unfortunately I did 
not see the cone until it was almost disintegrating, and cannot be per- 
fectly certain that it occupied the same position at the time of pollination, 
although I have no reason for believing that it did not. The other was 
growing inside the bush on the slope of the east bank of the Nahoon, and 
was the specimen which had penetrated furthest into the woodland forma- 
tion. Wind-borne pollen could only have reached it from the side on 
which the fertile seeds were found. 
