478 Traiuaction.s. — Botani/. 



3-4 flowers, and a very small broad apiculate persistent 

 bracteole at base. Flowers small, reddish, pedicelled, spread- 

 ing ; pedicels very slender, 1 line long. Calyx half the 

 length of corolla, sepals free, spreading, ovate, acute, 

 ciliolate. Corolla 2 lines long, cylindrical or narrow campanu- 

 late, 5-lobed ; lobes deltoid-ovate, obtuse, wrinkled, largely 

 recurved, 1-nerved ; margins and tij)s incurved. Filaments 

 short, adnate above the middle of the tube ; anthers small 

 sub-orbicular cordate. Style rather long, longer than calyx, 

 thickened below ; stigma simple, scarcely capitate. Hypo- 

 gynous scales very small, sub-oblong-rectangular, narrowed 

 upwards, truncate, tip retuse. Capsules small, 5-cleft. 



Hab. Whangaparaoa (Cape Runaway), a little north of 

 the East Cape : 1889 : per il/rs. E. H. Fcaton. 



Obs. I. The floral leaves or bracts of this species can only 

 be seen in the incipient state of its inflorescence, before expan- 

 sion, as they all fall ofl" very early. The preceding species, 

 D. tenuicaiiiis, has also floral bracts very like these of this 

 Hjiecies, only they are much smaller and not so early 

 deciduous. Writing from memory of 45-50 years, I believe I 

 have often noticed a similar feature in the common northern 

 species I), urvilleanum, A. Rich., and D. lessonianum, 

 A. Rich, before flowering. And the same character has been 

 fully noticed and described as pertaining to a large Tasmanian 

 and Australian species — D. milUgani, Hook. — by both Hooker 

 ("Icon. Plant.") and Bentham ("Flora Austral."). And it 

 is not unlikely that it belongs to other of our New Zealand 

 species, tliough hitherto not described through their floral 

 bracts falling off so very early. 



II. I have named this species in honour of Mrs. E. H. 

 Featon, of Gisborne, New Zealand — who has wrought so long 

 and so diligently at our New Zealand botany — the accom- 

 plished authoress of "The Art Album of New Zealand Flora " 

 (now in course of publication), who very kindly sent me the 

 specimen I have described. In her letter which accompanied 

 it she says, "The flowers are white and the buds pink, the 

 leaves are a pale-green on top and glaucous below, having a 

 purplish tinge as it approaches a buft'-coloured sheath." 



Order XLIII. MvRsiNEiB. 

 Genus 1. Myrsine, Linn. 



1. M. bracliijclada, sp. nov. 



A small somewhat rigid much-bi'anched shrub ; branches 

 short, bark darkish red-brown, smooth ; branchlets numerous, 

 very short, scarred. Leaves sub-fascicled at tips of branchlets 

 and at nodes, 4-5 together, spreading, obovate and oblong, 

 3-5 lines long, sub-n\embranaceous, glabrous, the upper por- 



