394 The Rev. R. T. Lower on Chamemeles coriacea 
C. coriacea is one of the rarest plants in Madeira ; and at pre- 
sent I am only acquainted with one locality for it. ‘This is on 
the sea-cliffs to the eastward of Funchal, about a mile out of the 
town along the Canico road. As this is a direction very likely 
to be taken in a short botanical ramble by a casual visitor, it 
might well be supposed by such a person that the plant was far 
more common than a longer residence would discover to be the 
case. It grows at the summit on the extreme verge of the cliff 
(in this place about two hundred or three hundred feet high), or 
on its perpendicular face a little lower down, forming a thick 
evergreen bush about four or five feet high, with something of 
the habit of the pomegranate (Punica Granatum). The soil (if 
soil it can be called) an arid crumbling tufa, mixed with basaltic 
debris. The flowers are produced abundantly in the months of 
December, January, or February, according to the earliness of 
the autumnal rains. Very few of them come to perfection, and 
the fruit is not ripe before the following November or De- 
cember. It is indeed so rarely perfected, that from the whole 
of the bushes, five or six in number, which had been covered 
the same month of the preceding year with a profusion of 
flowers, I only obtained, last December, eleven in a full-grown 
ripe state. - 
When thus mature, the fruit or haw is quite smooth and even, 
of a globe ose-oblong subpyriform. shape, flattened or truncate at 
. the apex, and depressed or with a small hollow in the centre, 
which is nearly covered and concealed by the converging, 
withered and blackened, or discoloured segments of the calyx. 
It is about the size of the fruit of Crategus oryacantha, which 
indeed it exactly resembles externally in every thing but colour; 
this eing in the present plant, when fully ripe, pale yellowish- 
| white, or rather a rich cream-colour. Length, at most half an 
inch; breadth, ; three-eighths. | Fisk (sarcocarpium) thick, i.e.a 
“little 
