of Ediiihitrgli, Sessiori 1883-84. 
381 
5. On the Structure of the Pitcher in the Seedling of Negmi- 
tlics, as compared with that in the Adult Plant. By Ih^o- 
fessor Alexander Dickson, M.D. 
Preliminary Note. 
The only observations, so far as I am aware, that have been made 
on the pitchers of Nepe7ithes seedlings, are those by Sir J. D. 
Hooker, who, in 1859, described their external configuration in his 
paper On the Origin and Development of the Pitchers of Nepen- 
thes, &c.,” in voL xxii. of the Linnean Society’s Transactions, and 
afterwards added a few details of anatomical structure, in his admir- 
able address on Insectivorous Plants, delivered at the Belfast meeting 
of the British Association in 1874. 
This year I have had opportunitiy of examining Nepenthes seed- 
lings from a large crop which our Botanic Garden Curator, Mr 
Lindsay, has raised from seeds of a female plant of N. rafflesiana, 
fertilised by pollen from N. Clielsoni (itself a hybrid). 
In these seedlings the small lanceolate cotyledons are immediately 
succeeded by pitcher-leaves, which in form, as ]3ointed out by 
Hooker, on the whole more closely resemble the pitchers of Sarra- 
cenia, than those of the adult Nepenthes. We have the entire leaf 
hollowed out into a funnel-shaped pitcher, with two largely de- 
veloped wung-like exjDansions, and vdth a remarkably ciliated lid, 
whose base extends round fully one half of the orifice of the pitcher, 
very much as in Sa7'racenia, and very unlike the condition in the 
adult Nepe7ithes, where the ammlus occupies almost the whole of 
the pitcher-orifice, the base of the lid being narrowed into a very 
small space. Our seedlings also exhibit, what Hooker has described, 
the convergence of the lateral wings towards each other above, and 
their union in the middle line, forming a transverse ciliated mem- 
brane below the orifice of the pitcher. 
As regards further details, our seedlings differ somewhat from 
those described by Hooker. In the first place, Hooker describes 
(Belfast address) the inner surface of the pitcher as wholly gland- 
ular, while in our plants its upper half, or so, is eglandular and 
conducting, being thickly studded with the characteristic down- 
wardly directed crescentic ledges. This difference between the two 
