78 THE JOUR?fAL OF BOTAIN^Y 



that both the New Guinea plant and Binstead's No. 304 from Ceylon 

 must be referred there also *. 



p, 2S9. —Fterobri/opsis Walkeri Broth. (No. 302). This must 

 be referred to P.frondosa (Mitt.) Fleisch. 



P. 291. — Stereophyllum papilUdens Card. ined. Theriot (Ann. 

 Conserv. de G-eneve, xx. 15) refers this plant (No. 38) to Stereo- 

 phyllum indicum (Bel.) Mitt., a much misunderstood species, which 

 S. papillide7is Card, closely resembles, but which has some real dis- 

 tinction in the cell structure. 



Betum Bescherellei Jaeg. 

 The New Zealand species of the Erythrocarpa and allied groups 

 are very difficult, and present some very perplexing problems. I am 

 looking forward — with no great appetite for the task — to attempting 

 to solve these in the near future, and I have no intention of antici- 

 pating that task now ; but one complication may be cleared away at 

 once. Authors in dealing with the New Zealand Brya (Brotherus, 

 Jaeger, Bescherelle, Paris, C. Mueller) have displayed much ingenuity 

 in differentiating two plants, B. eryihrocarpoides Hampe & C. 

 Mueller, and B. erythrocarpoides Schimp. For the latter Jaeger, 

 followed by Paris, &c., has altered the rame to B. Bescherellei, to 

 avoid duplication, while C. Mueller in Hedwig. xxxvii. 90 (1898), 

 ignoring these authors, has quite unnecessarily re-christened it 

 B. tornlosicollum. 



It does not appear that any of the authors concerned have taken 

 the trouble to compare the two plants with one another, none ot' them 

 at any rate make any comparison between them ; they appear to have 

 assumed that, as Schimper saw a difference, it was " theirs not to 

 reason why." The evidence for there being two distinct plants con- 

 cerned does not therefore appear, ^r/wrt^/rrc/i?, to be very weighty, 

 and what is to be said of it, when the fact is, so far as I can see, that 

 Schimper himself never saw any difference between them ! 



Bescherelle (Flore Nouv. Caled. in Ann. vSc. Nat. 5 Ser. xviii. 

 p. 214 (1873) describes B. erythrocarpoides Schimp. in herb, as a 

 new species, based on New Zealand specimens ex herb. Schimper, 

 leg. Knight, and New Caledonian ones leg. Krieger, 1866 ; and all 

 subsequent authors have assumed this to be a different thing from 

 B. erythrocarpoides Hampe & C. M. (1853). Bescherelle makes no 

 reference to the earlier B. erythrocarpoides, and all the evidence goes 

 to show he had overlooked it. No specimens of the New Caledonian 

 ])lant are to be found in our collections, but Knight's plant, '* N.Z. 

 1867," the type of the supposed B. erythrocarpoides Schimp. is 

 labelled by Schimper himself in his herbarium " B. erythrocarpoides 

 Hpe. & C. M." The whole trouble seems to have arisen from a 

 lapsus calami of Schimper, as the only New Zealand specimen in 

 Bescherelle's herbarium is labelled *' B. erythrocarpoides Sch." [in 

 Schimper's hand] " N. Zelande, Herb. Schimp." (in Bescherelle's 

 hand) ; and this is identical with a specimen in the British Museum 



* Thdriot, I find, considers this plant distinct from T. tahitense, and names it 

 T. Fleischeri, to which therefore all the above plants must be referred (c/. Bull, 

 de I'Acad. Internationale de G^ogr. bot. 1910, p. 100). 



