SOUTH AMERICAN BOTANY. PE 
Contributions to the Botany of Sourn America; by Joux Miers, 
Ese., F.R.S., F.L.S., &c.; continued from Vol. v. p. 190. 
SCLEROPHYLAX. 
The plant upon which this genus is proposed to be established, 
was found by me during my rapid journeys across the Pampas, 
from Mendoza to Buenos Ayres, in 1825 and 1826, but I could 
not examine its details until 1827, when I was first able to observe 
the results of the present analysis. It is of a prostrate, succulent 
habit, resembling much that of a Tetragonia, more especially as 
the drupaceous covering of the seed becomes ligneous and spi- 
nescent, owing to the enlargement and tumescence of the calyx, 
which finally encloses the capsule. My attention having again 
lately been directed to this anomalous plant by Sir William 
Hooker, at the suggestion of Prof. Arnott, who had noticed it in 
the collection of Doctor Gillies, I was induced to examine the 
specimens existing in the Herbarium of the former distinguished 
botanist, which I found to constitute two other species, distinct 
from that of my own collection. These plants are certainly very 
curious in their structure, and cannot be referred to any known 
natural order. Their leaves are geminate, as in the Nolanacea, 
and they resemble in their fleshy and prostrate habit, many of the — 
plants of that family, with which also the structure of their flowers — 
corresponds, although these are very small and inconspicuous, | 
-~ approaching in size and form to those of Petunia parviflora, which — 
= T hawe described in Illustr. So. Am. Pl. p. 111. plate 24; for the — 
us, if we rightly understand it, a modification of that of the celebrated professor, which — 
~ we have already explained, and which supposes that the stigmata of the lateral ear- 
 pidia have avorted. ; 
= Dr. Lindley, likewise, in his Nat. Syst. p.58, after recording this opinion bod i 
in the Bot. Reg. adds these words: “ or each of the two lobes of the stigma is com- — 
posed of two half lobes belonging to different carpels ;" to this phrase copied into hiş 
