494 DE. M. T. MASTERS OX THE STEUCTURE OF THE 



Pernando Po is a few degrees nearer the equator than Old Ca- 

 labar and a little to the west of the latter place. Lastly, Dr. 

 "Welwitsch met with a species in Angola, to which he has given 

 the MS. name of Angolensis. These indications are of course 

 only approximate, but they serve to show that species, or at least 

 specimens, of this genus have been met with at various points 

 near the coast, from Senegambia in the north, round the Gulf of 

 Guinea and the Bight of Benin, to Fernando Po, and as far south 

 as Angola. Whether or not the plants collected in this range all 

 belong to one variable species, or whether there are four or five 

 distinct forms, is a c[uestion which no one can fully answer at 

 present, from want of sufficient information ; and even if more 

 evidence were forthcoming, each systematist would probably answer 



the question for himself, according to his own notions of what 

 constitutes a species. 



I propose now to give a brief account of the more salient 

 and important features of the living plant at Kew, and then to 

 contrast them with the corresponding points in the dried speci- 

 mens from the various collectors, so far as they can be made out, 

 and with the descriptions and figures published by the various 

 authors who have written on this subject. 



The Kew plant is a small tree with verticillate, cylindrical 

 or slightly angular branches. Its leaves are alternate, leathery, 

 perfectly smooth and shining, three to eight inches long, lanceo- 

 late, tapering at the base, where the^^ are biglandular, somewhat 

 acuminate at the apex, their venation arcuate ; the leaf-stalk is 

 thick, and not more than from a quarter to half an inch long. 

 The flowers are borne for the most part singly in the axils of 

 the leaves, but sometimes they come up in twos and threes, and 

 occasionally they emerge either singly or in gi'onps directly from 

 the old wood, being in all cases nearly, if not quite, sessile, and 

 surrounded at the base by three small overlapping ovate bracts, 

 which are often glandular at the margins, and similar to those at 

 the base of the flower-bud of a Camellia. The flower-buds are some- 

 what angular, inversely pyramidal, pointed at the top. Each 

 flower is about two to three inches in diameter when fully ex- 

 panded, and it consists of the following parts : — First, a bell-shaped 

 calyx, divided about halfway down into five, ovate, acute, leathery 

 sepals, which are valvate in aestivation : in some flowers that I 

 examined, the sepals had near the apex, and at the margins, small 

 glandular excrescences; but these were not always present. The 

 corolla is rotate, five-lobed, each lobe rounded or ovate, longi- 



