warts.

The whole mass appears highly charged with wax. Wallich says that it is sold in the Burmese bazaars for medicinal purposes.

B. fungosa, Forst., is peculiar, as being the only Australian species. The following description of the arrangement of the tissues in this species is so clear that we cannot do better than quote it entire:"The most curious point in this species is the tendency of the tissues forming each vascular bundle in the rhizome to arrange themselves rudely into the form of an exogenous stem, the wood forming a zone of wedges round a central pith, enclosed by a cellular zone that communicates with the pith by broad medullary rays. The total absence of pith in the root, with whose wood these bundles communicate, would thus seem to indicate that the wood of the rhizome belongs to itself, though it has all the appearance of being solely produced by the root; the root, in short, supplies the nutriment from its own vascular tissue, but the parasite organizes it."

The several species of Balanophora are found on the roots of such trees as oaks, maples, vines, etc., but B. involucrata has also been found growing on the exposed aerial rootlets of oaks in damp or humid forests. This species, when growing upon subterranean roots, appears to affect them much more than any other, as it produces large knots from two to four inches in diameter. These are much prized by the natives, who make from them very neat wooden cups, which are in general use throughout the Himalaya and Thibet. Some of them are esteemed antidotes for poison, and for this purpose fetch a high price. This and the Java species, B. elongata, which furnishes a wax from which candles are made, are the only species of any importance in an economic point of view. In Lophophylum Weddellii, Hf., the root-stock is a somewhat spherical fleshy mass, covered on the upper part with long overlapping scales. From the top of this mass springs the flower-stalk, very much in the form of a pine cone, and covered likewise with imbricated scales. On the upper portion of this stalk small regular branches are given off, upon which the flowers are closely packed. A better idea of this singular plant will be obtained from Fig. 6 of the plate. It is a native of New Grenada, in moist woods. It is said to be used by the natives as an article of food. Two other species have been described, viz. :-L. mirabile, Schott and Endl., and L. Bolivianum, Wedd. Both of these are South American, the first being found in Brazil, the other in Bolivia.

Ombrophytum Peruvianum, Poppig and Endl., is another of those peculiar plants which Poppig has described as being eaten by the Peruvians, who boil it, and treat it similar

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