400 Scott & Sargant. — On the Development of 
It was the contrast between the young and the mature 
forms which suggested the study of the life-history of Arum 
maculatum from the germination of the seed onward. 
In July of the same year the mature plants with their 
spadices of ripe fruits were watched, and on one occasion 
a pair of chaffinches were seen to clear off the berries from 
two of these in half an hour. Further evidence of birds eating 
these berries is much needed, as many country people say 
that birds do not touch them. However, Gilbert White, in 
his Natural History of Selborne 1 , mentions that the thrush 
scratches out and eats the tubers of Arums from dry banks, 
and as the tuber is equally pungent and disagreeable to the 
taste, there seems no reason why birds should not also eat 
the berries. The disagreeable taste is principally due to the 
presence of raphides 2 (see p. 404). 
If birds often eat these berries, it will be easy to see how 
the seeds could have been deposited on the gorse-covered 
common at a long distance from the parent plants. 
Fruits were collected from several ripe spadices, and the 
seeds sown in flower-pots, as soon as ripe in July, They 
germinated readily. The earth was disturbed at intervals, 
and young seedlings in their various stages of germination 
preserved in spirit. 
The growth of the young plants is extraordinarily slow ; it 
is no wonder that the seedling plants have been little noticed, 
as nothing is to be seen above ground during the first two 
seasons’ growth, and in the third only one ovate leaf shows 
itself, which at this stage is difficult to distinguish from a leaf 
of a young plant produced by vegetative budding from the 
old tubers 3 . 
The easiest way of distinguishing them is, perhaps, by the 
length of the underground part of the petiole, which in a 
1 Letter xv. 
2 Stahl, Pflanzen und Schnecken, Jena, 1888, p. 85. 
3 The ‘ second season ’ in this paper corresponds to the first season of Rimbach. 
In England the seeds ripen in July, and germinate in the autumn ; whereas in the 
colder climate of Germany the seeds do not ripen till September, and consequently 
do not germinate till the spring. 
