BY THE PRESIDENT. 
5 
recoils and drags the flower to the bottom of the water where it 
produces its berry. This is the more interesting from the flower 
of the male plant having but a short stalk. Mr. Daydon Jackson * 4 
describes, on the authority of a correspondent, the curious provision 
possessed by Fumaria corymbosa (Desf.) for placing its fruit in a 
secure place. The plant usually grows in the crevices of over¬ 
hanging rocks, and after flowering the peduncle lengthens and 
bends away from the light towards any crevice which offers the 
greatest obscurity, so that the fruit is deposited in a spot adapted 
for the young plants. Mr. Jackson well adds that this fumaria 
“ seems to perform an act of oviposition.” The icy-leaved toad¬ 
flax ( Linaria oymbalaria) turns its capsules towards the wall or 
rock on which it is growing, and, when they hurst by maturity, or 
by a gust of wind, the seeds are scattered and may then fall into 
any chinks in the wall. 
A striking instance of protective concealment is seen in the 
cleistogamic flowers which are described thus by Darwin: f — u They 
are remarkable from their small size and from never opening, so 
that they resemble buds; their petals are rudimentary or quite 
aborted; their stamens are often reduced in number, with the anthers 
of very small size, containing few pollen-grains, which have re¬ 
markably thin transparent coats, and generally emit their tubes 
whilst still enclosed within the anther-cells; and, lastly, the pistil 
is much reduced in size . . . These flowers do not secrete nectar 
or emit any odour ; from their small size as well as from the corolla 
being rudimentary, they are singularly inconspicuous. Consequently 
insects do not visit them, nor, if they did, could they find any 
entrance.” Such flowers are invariably self-fertilised, and their 
loss of the chance of cross-fertilisation is compensated by the 
certainty of self-fertilisation and the comparative safety of the 
anthers and pistil. Some plants, such as Viola odorata, bring the 
capsules of their cleistogamic flowers beneath the ground, where 
the seeds are matured, while those of the perfect flowers are ex¬ 
posed to the attacks of birds and other enemies. Again, the flowers 
of the water-plant Furyale ferox , which are cleistogamic, are 
perfected below the surface. 
I shall afterwards treat of seeds when separated from the parent- 
plant, but I have introduced the last few illustrations in this 
portion of my address inasmuch as the concealment of the seeds 
is due to the action of the plants themselves. 
* 1 Journ. Linn. Soc.,’ vol. xix, p. 232. 
t ‘Forms of Flowers,’ p. 310. 
