996 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
subalpine tracts of the Diamond and Gold districts. We have 
just seen some bundles of them opened, and find them to be 
very different in character from any of his former collec- 
tions, and far more interesting to the botanist. A great part 
of them having been collected on the most elevated tracts in 
the interior, their general appearance is strikingly dissimilar 
from the plants of the plains, or of the forests. The Shrubs, 
in particular, are remarkable for the smallness of their foliage 
and the great size of the flowers, which is eminently the 
case among the Melastomacee, as is well exemplified by the 
numerous beautiful species of Lavoisiera, which Mr. Gard- 
ner's present collection contains, the stems of some of which 
resemble much more those of a Lycopodium, with closely im- 
bricated leaves, than dicotyledonous flowering shrubs. There 
also exist about fifty species of Eriocaulon, which, added to 
the number he has already discovered, make about 100 species 
in all of this highly beautiful and curious genus found during 
Mr. Gardner’s travels. But very few of these have any 
. resemblance to our own solitary species, E. septangulare. A 
great number of them are large suffruticose plants, often ` 
attaining a height of from four to six feet; very muc 
branched, and the branchlets terminated by a large white 
ball made up of a vast number of smaller heads, placed on 
peduncles of unequal length. Another remarkable circum- 
stance connected with these strange plants, is the fact, that 
by far the greater number of the Brazilian species do not 
inhabit the water as our native British one does, but the most 
dry and arid parts of mountain declivities. Many also grow 
and flower in parched flat sandy places, which in the wet 
season have been flooded. The truly aquatic Brazilian kinds 
all, more or less, resemble our own in habit. 
There are also in this collection many species of that most 
curious genus of Composite, Lychnophora, as well as some of 
nearly ali the genera which belong to the tribe Albertinee. 
The L horas are large shrubs, several having the appear- 
anée of Pines, and with the Vellozias, which “also abound 
there, give a peculiar aspect to the upland country which 
