ON THE GENERA RADAM.EA AND NESOGENES. 311 
On the Genera Radamea, Bentham, and Nesogenes, A. de Candolle. 
By W. Borrisc Hemstty, F.R.S., F.L.S., V.M.H. 
‘Read 20th February, 1913. | 
(PLATE 14.) 
By permission of the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, I am 
able to give the Society some interesting facts in phytogeography as exem- 
plified by the genus Nesogenes in Coral Island Floras. 
In the year 1846 Bentham founded and described the genus Radamea 
(DC. Prodr. x. 509) on a Madagascar shrub, to which he gave the specific 
name of montana. He also referred imperfect specimens of a plant from the 
Agalega (Galega) Islands to this genus which he named Madamea prostrata. 
I may mention in passing that the derivation of Radamwa is not given, but 
it doubtless commemorates King Radama I. of Madagascar, who abolished 
export slave-trade and favoured christian missionaries. Radameu montana 
is now well known, and it is figured in Hooker's * Icones Plantarum,’ t. 1406. 
It is а shrub from 5 to 10 feet high and a characteristic Serophulariacea, 
having small, opposite leaves and salyer-shaped corollas, ^ Radamea 
prostrata, as I shall presently show, is not of the same genus nor of the 
same family. 
Among the plants collected in the Coral Islands on Beechey's Voyage to 
the Pacific and Behring Strait, 1825 to 1828, was a herb with the aspect of 
some Berophulariacees or Labiatz. This was deseribed by Hooker and 
Arnott in the Botany of the Voyage, 67, under the name of Myoporum? 
euphrasioides. Subsequently, in 1847, A. de Candolle, Prodromus, xi. 703, 
raised it to generic rank, calling it JVesogenes, “ nomen ex origine insulari " ; 
still retaining it in the Myoporacez. He gives the habitat as: * In insula 
Whitsunday, id est Pentecótes, non proeul a Nova Caledonia.” This is an 
error, and is corrected below in the general distribution of Nesogenes 
euphrasioides. 
The botanical collectors of Wilkes's United States Exploring Expedition, 
1838 to 1842, obtained specimens of Nesogenes euphrasioides, and Asa Gray 
published a much fuller description of it in the * Proceedings of the American 
Academy of Sciences,’ vi. (1862) 51, Шап had previously appeared and 
referred it to the Verbenaceze, to which it undoubtedly belongs. Such is the 
early history of this interesting genus. The finding, by Dr. Bayley Balfour, 
of a second species in the Mascarene Island, Rodriguez, on the Transit of 
Venus Expedition, 1874, was a geographical surprise. As a species, 
N. decumbens, Balf. fil., Transactions of the Royal Society, elxviii. reprint 
p. 61, t. 31, is quite distinct from the Pacific Islands N. euphrasioides. 
