fuel in smelting copper (as the dead and withered stems. of 
the cactus are for refining that metal) in the mining districts 
of Coquimbo, so that in many places the district is almost 
cleared of these plants. 
Cordia decandra was introduced by Messrs. Veitch, who 
sent the specimen here figured in May, 1879. : 
Descr. A shrub, rough to the touch from the copious short 
rigid hairs. Branches scabrid, terete, leafy. Leaves alternate, 
sessile, erect, spreading or deflexed, linear, lanceolate, obtuse 
or subacute, scabrid above and rugose with small veins, grey 
and pubescent beneath, with glabrous varied veins, margins 
recurved very strongly. Punicles lax, terminal, corymbose, 
many-flowered, drooping; peduncles and pedicels slender, 
tomentose. Flowers solitary or fascicled, Calyx campanulate, 
many-nerved, hispid with brown hairs, variously irregularly 
lobed and with 10-marginal subulate teeth. Corolla one to 
one-and-a-half inch in diameter, pure white; tube funnel- 
shaped; limb expanded, obtusely 10-lobed at the margin. 
Stamens 10, almost included, filaments slender, ciliate ; anthers 
small, yellow. Ovary conical; style slender, its divisions 
slender forked at the tip. Fruit like a hazel-nut, half to two- 
thirds inch long, almost enclosed in the calyx, hard, ovoid, 
apiculate, smooth, without any trace of a fleshy covering, 
four-celled, with four woody valves that partially separate 
from the woody axis and allow the seeds to escape.—J. D. H. 
Fig. 1, Tube of corolla and stamen; 2, pistil :—both enlarged. 
