360 
Notes. 
calyculum 3-partitum et corpusculum obovoideum truncatum fere bice- 
phalum cavum utroque latere apertum et fimbriato-incisum gerentem/ 
This termination of the spike is so common and so characteristic of 
the species in India that it is prominently shown in the figures, Rheede, 
Hort. Mai. v. 10, t. 81, and in Wight, Ic. t. 877. Wight gives an enlarged 
picture of it — his Fig. 2 — of which his explanation is ‘portion of a 
spike showing both male and female flow T ers with its terminal cross/ 
Bentham’s explanation is taken from the drawings and notes in my 
herbarium dated 1868 and 1871, and which here follow. 
Fig. 6, A, is the summit of a flower-spike, natural size, a , a are the 
bracts, each of which conceals a normal female flower having three cells 
to the ovary, and ripening often three carunculate seeds with superior 
radicles ; though in these ‘cross-bearing’ spikes the lower female flowers 
are frequently barren, b is the dense narrow cylindric spike of small 
male flowers, c is the terminal cross, usually subsymmetric in ripe fruit. 
Fig. 6, B, represents the terminal cross enlarged, and Fig. 6, C, repre- 
sents a vertical section of Fig. 6, B. It contains a single perfect seed with 
regular embryo, and the seed is nearly normal except that the caruncle 
is obsolete, and that the radicle is inferior as regards the axis of growth. 
sep., sepal ; si., withered stigma ; e, probably barren loculus of ovary. 
Fig. 6, D, is a facsimile of my sketch in 1871 of the terminal cross 
when young. The sepals, sep., are somewhat distorted : but the flower is 
as it were pressed down horizontally; the three styles, si., with bifid tips 
are normal, but stick out sideways ; one loculus of the ovary, d, contains 
the ovule, in its normal position as regards the loculus; the two processes 
e, e, I marked doubtfully as the two barren loculi. As this monstrous 
ovary ripens the turning is carried further from the normal till it takes 
almost a reversed position. 
Thinking these notes sufficiently curious for publication, I put them 
(with the material on which they were founded) aside apart from my 
other Euphorbiaceae, and have just lighted on them in distributing 
some old collections. I regret that thus, while I placed them before 
Mr. Bentham when he was engaged on Acalypha, they did not come 
before the notice of Sir J. D. Hooker when he was working up the 
Euphorbiaceae for the Flora of British India. The above explanation 
is, I hope, right so far as it goes; but should be regarded, as 
Professor Oliver observes, as calling attention to a point deserving 
(and easily admitting) further investigation. 
C. B. CLARKE, Kew. 
