sary to keep it from frost in a greenhouse or very good pit 
during winter; and it would be better perhaps to consider 
it altogether as a conservatory plant. It increases by 
cuttings, but is apt to damp off: if kept in health, it is 
very handsome. 
The first account of the genus was given by the learned 
M. Desfontaines, in the fourth volume of the Mémoires du 
Muséum, in the year 1818. The specimens had been col- 
lected in Chile by Dombey, and seem to have been not 
only in an excellent state of preservation, but very com- 
plete, the seeds having been figured, although neither 
analysed nor described. The plant now published appears 
to differ specifically in having its leaves almost constantly 
alternate, with much shorter divisions, its stigmas longer 
and narrower, and its flowers borne upon peduncles many 
times longer than the leaves; perhaps also in its sepals 
being less acuminate. Generically, however, there is no 
difference between them 
M. Decandolle assigns inflexed valves to the fruit; but 
this is clearly an inadvertency ; nor are they so described 
by M. Desfontaines. 
M. Decandolle refers the genus to Oxalidewe, as M. Des- 
fontaines originally suggested ; and, in fact, it agrees An 
habit with some species of shrubby Oxalis, and also with 
the order generally in its 3-lobed exstipulate leaves, 5-leaved 
calyx, 10 hypogynous stamens, 5-celled polyspermous cap- 
sule, and albuminous seeds, having a succulent testa; but 
the want of acidity in the foliage, the non-articulation of 
the lobes of the le 
ut if we compare it with Zygophylle, or any of the 
neighbouring orders, it will be found to differ still more 
rom them than from Oxalidex ; so that we think M. 
some other plants 
aving a more direct affinity with it shall have been 
discovered. 
—r 
