Dr. Smith's Characters of Poiretia. 305 



often hairy and rusty-coloured, with a prominent rib, beneath; 

 reticulated on both sides with innumerable minute veins. Sti- 

 pulas small, linear-lanceolate, recurved, rigid, smooth. Flowers 

 rather small, on short, simple, axillary, hairy stalks, either soli- 

 tary or in pairs, with % or more small lanceolate bracteas. Calyx 

 densely clothed externally with brown and white silky hairs, in 

 the manner of some Astragali, 2-lipped, permanent ; the upper 

 lip largest, spreading upwards, extremely abrupt, cloven ; lower 

 of 3 equal lanceolate segments. Corolla longer than the calyx, 

 variegated with lilac and violet. Stamens 10, all united into a 

 tube cloven to the very base at its upper side, and permanent 

 under the ripe fruit. Germen roundish, smooth. Style awl- 

 shaped, ascending, hairy at the base only. Stigma obtuse. Le- 

 gume sessile, naked, minutely furrowed and striated, of a 

 shining brown, cartilaginous, globose, or very slightly com* 

 pressed, about ± of an inch in diameter, tipped with a minute 

 oblique point, inflated, of one cell. Seeds 2, roundish, smooth, 

 variegated, 1 affixed to each valve at the upper suture, and ac- 

 companied, as in the two preceding genera, by a white oblong 

 appendage or strophiolum. 



2. P. elliptica, foliis elliptico-oblongis. 



This is known to me merely by a specimen gathered by Mr. 

 Menzies at King George's Sound, on the west coast of New 

 Holland, which unluckily is not in fruit, but the whole habit, 

 and all the parts of the flower, so precisely agree with the fore- 

 going species, that I have no doubt of the genus of the present 

 plant. The branches are round, alternate, leafy, silky when 

 young. Leaves about an inch and half long, alternate, on short 

 downy stalks ; more or less accurately elliptical, flat, entire, or 

 very obscurely crenate, emarginate with a diminutive point; 



vol. ix. 2 r smooth 



