752 Thiselton-Dyer — Morphological Notes . 
greatest width of the whole specimen some five. One cannot 
but wonder, if such an object occurred in the fossil state, what 
the palaeo-botanist would make of it. That it at any rate 
represents a haustorium of Loranthus aphyllus, there can, 
I think, be no doubt. 
The whole of this singular structure must be regarded as 
a modified root. It differs little from the similar structure 
luminously described by Sachs 1 in the Mistletoe ( Viscum 
album), but it has been modified so as to adapt it to the 
peculiar nature of its host. The haustorium adheres here 
and there to the fibro-vascular cylinder, but I am disposed to 
think there is no real coalescence of the tissues : the condition 
of the material did not allow, however, of this point being 
definitely ascertained. As in Viscum the haustorium gives 
rise to shoots which break through the cortex and appear 
externally. The points marked a , b , c, and d, in Fig. 2, 
show where the shoots have disarticulated from the haustorium. 
They are destitute of chlorophyll : the plant is therefore 
wholly parasitic. 
It is interesting to note that the aerial shoots always emerge, 
according to observers on the spot, on the upper side of the 
spine-tufts 2 . I quote the following account of this from a 
letter received in 1894 from Mr. J. W* Warburton, at that 
time Consul-General at Valparaiso. 
: Another Quintral [the local name for Loranthus ] grows 
oh the tall Cactus. I found this at from 3,000 to 5,000 feet 
elevation. I had not seen any of it at low elevation near the 
coast, though the same Cactus is plentiful here. 
‘ This Quintral is very plentiful ; I suppose two out of five 
Cacti, certainly one in five carrying it. On some it was in 
great masses and looked like bunches ; the berries or fruit 
mostly red, ripening pink. 
‘ I examined some thousands of plants on at least a hundred 
or more Cacti, and I noticed one circumstance that struck me 
1 Lectures on the Physiology of Plants, pp. 25, 26. 
2 See Hemsley, Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot., vol. xxxi, p. 306, in which, however, the 
point is not quite clear 
