KOTES OX MESEMBK Y ANTHEM UM 71 



in Thunberg"s hand. Neither Soiider nor Berger cites any later col- 

 lector ; and the latter says the plant is not now in cultivation. 



M. DiGiTATUii Ait. Hort. Kew. ii. 181. 

 It would appear that of this very distinct species the only authentic 

 material is that afforded hy Masson's drawing : Sonder says it is not 

 in Thunberg's herbarium, nor is it in Herb. Banks. ; Berger (p. 228) 

 reproduces a fragment of Masson's large drawing. The species Avas met 

 with in Little Namaqualand during the Percy ttladen Memorial Expe- 

 dition to the Orange Kiver in 1910-11, and groups of the plant are 

 reproduced from photographs then taken in the Gardeners'' Chronicle 

 for August 19, 1911 (p. 124) in the course of some notes on the expedi- 

 tion contributed by the late H. H. W. Pearson. Pearson says : *' The 

 erect stems are very short, and bear one to three leaves, of which the 

 upjDermost and youngest resembles a very corpulent finger. They 

 contain much water and are very soft, so that a dried specimen can 

 give but little idea of the natural appearance of the plant," which 

 seems admirably convej^ed in Masson's di'awing. The distribution is 

 very local : it was " only found in a few small patches in this 

 stretch of desert, where, apparently, Thunberg's specimens also were 

 observed." 



As in other cases, Thunberg's later name (op. cif. p. 6) is employed 

 by Sonder and other authors : Berger, however, whose attention was 

 directed to Masson's plants (though this is not stated) by my paper 

 in this Journal for 1884, rightly adopts that of Hort. Kew. In Index 

 Keivensis, Thunberg's name is retained and that of Hort. Kew. is 

 reduced to a synonym : had the dates been appended to each reference 

 — a never sufficiently to be regretted omission — the order of precedence 

 would, as in so many other cases, at once have been clear. The note 

 as to the MSS. in Journ. Bot. 1884, 146, is not altogether correct : 

 the detailed description (transcribed by Bacstrom) is stated by 

 Dryander to be from Thunberg, but Thunberg's name was not added 

 to Solander's diagnosis until later (by Dryander) and there is no 

 ground for my former suggestion that Solander "purposely modified" 

 Thunberg's name — of which, indeed, he could hardly have been aware. 



There are in the Banksian collection a large number of specimens 

 from Masson which have never been worked up but are worth the atten- 

 tion of a monographer : one is fully described and named in Solander 

 MSS., where is also described another whose name 1 have not found 

 on any sheet. Many of the specimens are, as Ilesemhryanthema go, 

 quite good ; they could probably be identified by one acquainted with 

 the genus and may possibly represent some of the species — described in 

 Hort. Kew. from Masson's material- — of which no tyj^es are known to 

 exist. Of the 69 species in Hort. Kew,, 19 are described only from 

 Masson's material, and 5 others were inti'oduced by him to cultivation. 



There are also in the Herbarium a few specimens from Oldenburg 

 which present less satisfactory material, and one collected at False 

 Bay by James Robertson in 1772. 



M. EMARCiDUM Thunb. in Nov. Act. Nat. Cur. viii. App. 9 (1791) 

 is superseded both by Sonder and Berger, and in Ind. Kew. by the 

 later J/, anatomiciim Haw. Misc. 50 (1803). We have specimens 

 from Masson. 



