366 REPORT ON THE PLANTS 
tion of air from sea to sea has been established, the rainy season will 
be considerably shorter, and the climate cooler and more healthy ; but 
to what extent that change may be accomplished is a problem which 
industry will have to solve. 
Second Report on Mr. Sprucn’s Collections of Dried Plants from 
Nortn BRAZIL; dy GEORGE BENTHAM, Esa. 
(Continued from p. 200.) 
Since the last portion of this report was printed, a further collection 
of between three and four hundred species has arrived from the neigh- 
bourhood of Barra do Rio Negro, at the junction of the Rio Negro 
with the Amazon. These plants are henceforth included in our report. 
The Olacinee consist of Heisteria cyanocarpa, Popp. et Endl., a new 
genus from Barra, described below under the name of Diplocrater 
acuminatus, and a Liriosma, also from Barra, with the foliage and 
inflorescence of L. Vellosiana, DC., but with the buds too young to 
ascertain with certainty whether it belongs to that species, my speci- 
mens from Rio Janeiro being already past flowering. The Barra plant 
is described by Mr. Spruce as a slender tree of about eighteen feet; 
and much branched, growing in the thick forest. 
The Heisteria cyanocarpa was from a weak slender tree, of about 
twenty-five feet, found on the steep cliffs called Barreras, near Santarem. 
The foliage is not unlike that of H. Raddiana, Benth., from Rio 
Janeiro, with petioles three to four lines long, but the pedicels are 
much longer, whilst in M. Raddiana they are always shorter, than the 
petioles, the fruit-bearing calyx very much smaller and less deeply 
... divided, and the fruit itself about four lines long, oblong, not globose. 
Gardner’s Brazilian collection contains, besides the H. Raddiana 
(n. 5378, described in the Niger Flora, p. 258), and some specimens 
which, for want of fruit, I am unable to determine with certainty 
(n. 2516, 5974, and 5379, the two former probably H. cauliflora, and 
.. the third H. Raddiana), two new species, which it may not be out of 
_ place here to mention. 
_ 1l. Heisteria ovata; foliis ovatis brevissime acuminatis basi rotundato- 
. truncatis, pedicellis fructiferis petiolum (3—4-linearem) superantibus, 
