MR. a. BEJS'THAM ON MYBTACE.!:. 147 



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Metrosideros in its alternate leaves. To this he afterwards added 

 the opposite-leaved species, which proves to be a congener of 

 Miquel's Nania. Finding more recently that the character 

 common to these two would also apply to the typical Metrosideros^ 

 he, in describing an additional alternate-leaved species, reunited 

 the whole with the latter genus. In the meantime Brongniart 



and Gris, in 



Myrtaceae, had esta- 



blished their genus Fremya, w^hich must include the two genuine 

 species of alternate-leaved Xanthostemons. In retaining the 

 genus the laws of priority compel us to adopt F. Mueller's name, 

 but with the much more definite characters given by Brongniart 

 and G-ris, the most important of which, besides the habit, is 

 the insertion of the ovules in a ring round the margin or base of 

 a peltate or clavate placenta. Draparnaudia of Montrouzier is 

 probably a species of the same genus. 



Backhousia, Harv. & Hook., with four species, and Osborjs'ia, 



Mnell 



My 



dry 



Myrt 



As genera they 



are both of them very distinct by a variety of characters. 



r 



Tribe III. Mvete^. 



This vast tribe, with uniformly opposite dotted leaves, and 

 characterized by the succulent indehiscent fruit, is, with very few 

 exceptions, limited to tropical or subtropical regions, extending 

 over both the new and the old world. With almost a few ex- 

 ceptions, there is so little definiteness in the floral or carpological 

 differences exhibited by their numerous species, that their dis- 

 tribution into genera is exceedingly difficult, and has become to 

 a great extent arbitrary. After deducting a feAV monotypic or very 

 small genera presenting more positive abnormal though perhaps 

 artificial characters, the whole of the twelve or thirteen hundred 



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species now known might be almost equally well united into a 

 single genus Myrtus^ or distributed into the four old genera 

 Psidium^ Calyptranthes, Myrtles^ and Eugenia^ as dispersed in the 

 60 or 70 genera proposed by Blume, O. Berg, and others, or 

 reduced to 18 to 20 as in our ' Genera Plantarum.' In thus 

 rejecting so large a proportion, especially of the South-American 

 genera proposed by Berg, it is not that we do not appreciate his 

 zealous labours in wading through the chaos presented by the 

 innumerable forms preserved in herbaria, nor that we deny that 



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