BY PROF. BAYLEY BALFOUR AND W. W. SMITH. 
279 
angular, of a dark brown tint with an areolate seed-coat; 
they are scarcely i mm. in length. 
Obtained by a native collector, working under Mr. J. C. 
Moulton’s supervision, from near Sudan in the State of 
Sarawak, in February, 1914. 
For those to whom botanical terms may present difficulty, 
the important characters which will aid (apart from the 
figure) in their search for the plant are:—A stout herb 
with no apparent stem, a single large leaf 1 foot or more 
in diameter with a stout stalk at least 1 foot long, and, 
most characteristic of all, with numerous small flowers 
attached to the furrow of the leaf-stalk and to the furrow 
of the midrib of the blade. The plant is so unique in 
these characters that its recognition is easy. It is, in all 
probability, a shade-plant in wet forest. 
We have described this plant as possessing a single leaf 
with a leaf-petiole and epiphyllous inflorescence, and the 
dried material at our disposal sanctions no other course. 
If we follow convention in this we by no means intend 
thereby to express our view of the morphological value of 
the vegetative parts described. The plant seems to us to 
have special interest from the morphological side, but the 
true explanation of its parts can only be arrived at by an 
investigation of the living plant. Meanwhile we may 
give here the morphological interpretation which appears 
to us as probably the right one of the parts as we know 
them. 
We suggest that the stalk and broad lamina are the 
parts of an outgrowth from the primitive protocorm of the 
plant—the stalk being hypocotyl, the lamina cotyledon— 
which it will not surprise us to learn has no other vegeta¬ 
tive organs. From this protocormic outgrowth which 
possesses great meristematic activity the flowers arise. 
The whole construction of Moultonia is to us that of a 
plant showing a permanently embryonic vegetative state. 
Let us clearly understand what this means. 
Of the egg, out of which every angiospermous plant 
develops, one-half is devoted to the formation of a body of 
meristem-cells which is the primitive corm—protocorm— 
of a future plant; to the other half which forms the 
suspensor is assigned the primary duty of regulating the 
position of the protocorm within the seed and of aiding in 
the feeding of it. The whole product of the egg—suspensor 
and protocorm—is commonly known as the proembryo, 
