134 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



crepancy by a supposition that three of the anthers were 

 deciduous. He says he has observed that to be the case. 

 Our field studies reveal no tendency even, to anything of 

 that kind. Kunth, in the Enuraeratio, supposes the hexan- 

 drous representation in the Paradisus to be an error of the 

 artist. Perhaps this learned author did not read English, 

 and so, failed to be instructed by Salisbury's verbal testi- 

 mony to the faithfulness of the figure in this respect. It is 

 a very interesting piece of infoimation, that which Mr. 

 Britten has given us in a foot-note appended to his valua- 

 ble article that, among the original specimens of B, co)tgesia 

 collected by Menzies, he finds one whose difi'erence from all 

 the others had not escaped the keen perception of Robert 

 Brown, who marked it "Distinct and hexandrous." This 

 specimen will most likely prove to be of the present species; 

 for, as I have already said, this grows with B. congesta and 

 flowers at the same time. A collector would naturally ob- 

 tain the two at once, and at a season of the year when the 

 other common and Avell known hexandrous species would be 

 long out of flower. The plant which Professor Wood saw 

 at Yreka, in the northern part of the State, " Growing with 

 the other \^B. congestct], readily distinguished at sight," 

 must have been this and not B. ccqntcUa, which , apart from 

 its far earlier flowering, does not grow so far to the north- 

 ward, to my knowledge. 



-t--^ Perianth-tiLhe funnel form, iwt at all constricted ahove. 



B. iNSULAKis. Scape 3 — 5 feet high : leaves often a yard 

 long and an inch broad : bracts elliptic-lanceolate, acumin- 

 ate, scarious, tinged with purple and, marked by dark veins; 

 umbel elongated: perianth light purple, ten lines long; 

 tube about 4 lines; segments ovate-oblong, obtuse, campan- 

 ulate, not recurved: appendages of filaments erect, not con- 

 vergent. — B. capitata, Greene, Bull. Cal. Acad. i. 227, not 

 of Bentham. 



Islands off the Californian coast, from San Miguel to Gua- 



