SEED DISPERSAL IN MARSH SAMPHIRE OR GLASS-WORT. 135
The larvae have been plentiful this year in Coggeshall and
Kelvedon, where my friend Mr. A. R. Thompson and his wife
found two dozen by searching the potato fields, and a further
two or three dozen are known to have been taken there. Over
a dozen were also found in some small allotments at High Garrett,
Bocking. These larvae were found between the middle and
end of August when they were full-fed. The capture of the
moth is a much rarer occurrence, but one of our members, Mr.
F. E. Butcher, of High Roding, kindly brought me a perfect
specimen which he captured at High Roding on September 27th.
It is, therefore, probably correct to say that the Death's-
Head Hawk has been present in hundreds in Essex this year,
at any rate in the larval state.
SEED DISPERSAL IN MARSH SAMPHIRE
OR GLASS-WORT.
By G. LISTER, F.L.S.
IN September the seeds of the Marsh-Samphire (Salicornia
herbacea L.) appear to be mature; the bright green embryo
with its radicle folded against the cotyledons is clearly seen
through the membranous testa, but there is no sign of how
the seeds are to become free from the cavities in the fleshy axis
in which they lie.
Towards the end of last November, a boxful of red autumnal
plants was sent me from saltings near Lymington, on account
of the brilliant colour they had assumed. But some of the
plants had lost all their plump sausage-like appearance and
were so dry and shrivelled as to bear little resemblance to their
former state; under a lens it was seen that in most cases the
flat-topped perianth, together with the membranous wall of
the ovary (the utricle), had contracted from the stalk and
dropped off, leaving the erect grey oval seed loosely attached
to its hollow in the axis. As the plants dried, the paper on
which they lay became strewn, partly with free seeds, partly
with seeds attached above to the perianth and utricle; the margin
of the flat perianth had, on drying, contracted and turned up,
forming a narrow circular wing, which may help in seed-dispersal
on a breezy day. The testa of the seed is provided with slender