these is still flourishing, and flowered for the first time in 
the great Palm House in March, 1866. 
The genus Meryta is confined to. the Pacific islands. It 
was discovered first by G. Forster, during Captain Cook’s 
Second Voyage; since which time two species have been 
found in Norfolk Island, one in the Isle of Pines (New 
Caledonia), and one in the islets off the east coast of New 
Zealand. (See Seemann’s Flor. Viti, p. 119.) 
Duscr. A tree, with a slender erect trunk, fifty to sixty 
feet high, branched at the top. Leaves two to three feet - 
long, crowded at the ends of the branches, spreading, 
narrow-obovate or somewhat fiddle-shaped, acute or obtuse, 
base cordate, bright-green, coriaceous; petiole short, very 
stout. Mowers male, female, and hermaphrodite (according 
to Endlicher’s description taken from Bauer’s drawings); in 
our plant hermaphrodite, with imperfect anthers, most 
densely crowded into oblong compound heads which are two 
to three inches long, and formed of innumerable clusters of 
about six sessile flowers, seated ona thick erect green rachis ; 
bracts at the base of the heads one to one and a half inches 
long, ovate-lanceolate, with a dorsal tooth. Calyx nearly 
one-half inch long, oblong, subcylindrie, truncate, girt with 
a low cupular bracteole at the base; lobes or teeth six, 
triangular-ovate, acute, reflexed. Samens six ; filaments very 
short ; anthers ovate-oblong, imperfect. S/yles six, stout, 
subulate, recurved, grooved and papillose along the inner 
face. Ovary six-celled. 
Fig. 1, Reduced figure of whole plant; 2 and 8, portions of leaf and (4) 
of inflorescence :—of the natural size. 5, flower; 6, vertical, and 7, trans- 
verse section of the ovary :—all magnified, 3 
