PAPERS READ. 



REPORT ON A SMALL COLLECTION OF PLANTS FROM 

 THE AIRD-RIVER, OBTAINED BY MR. THEODORE 

 BE VAN DURING HIS RECENT EXPEDITION ; 



Submitted by Baron von Mueller, K.C.M.C, M.D., Ph.D., 



F.R.S., &c. 



(Plates VI and vii.) 



Among the plants entrusted to the writer's examination, two 

 prove new to science, and of these two now the descriptions are 

 offered. Besides species of the following genera occur in the 

 collection : — Myristica, Pittosporum, Quercus, Mucuna, Manilloa, 

 Voacanga {OrchiiJeda), Dischidia, Fagrcea, Selaginella, Trichomanes, 

 Davalia, Asplenium, Aspidmm, Polypodium. 



The Manilloa is the M. grandiflora of Scheffer. Mr. Bevan 

 remarks, that it attains about 15 feet in height, that the stem 

 is bare, that the colour of the floral leaves is salmon-pink, and 

 that they bend downwards in bell-shaped masses. 



Mussaenda Bevanl 



(Plate VI.) 



Branchlets glabrous ; leaves nearly orbicular, only along their 

 costate nerves hairy ; racemes few-flowered, almost corymbose ; 

 peduncles, bracts, pedicels and calyces rather densely beset with 

 appressed brownish hairlets ; lobes of the calyx often isomorphous, 

 during anthesis longer than the tube, deltoid-semilanceolar, acumi- 

 nate, early deciduous, the fifth calyx-lobe (if changed) extremely 

 large, conspicuously stalked, pale, ovate-orbicular, almost glabrous ; 



