444 ' — ON OAKESIA. 
facts, important in the history of the genus, having come 
to my knowledge, I have thought that, perhaps, this addi- 
tional notice may not prove without interest to botanists. 
Our plant is particularly curious as a new type in a very 
small family, and as illustrating the proper generical rank of 
Ceratiola and Corema. It was first noticed in print by Dr. 
Torrey, who described it most carefully in the fourth volume 
of the Annals of the New York Lyceum. Here, upon in- 
complete specimens, it was referred to Empetrum, and the 
specific name of Conradi given it, in honour of Prof. Samuel 
Conrad, who gathered it in New Jersey. In 1838 I re- 
ceived specimens from Plymouth in the southern part of 
Massachusetts, and in 1839 collected it myself abundantly, 
and with mature but abortive fruit, at the same station. The 
fructification till then unknown to Dr. Torrey, who, yet from 
the habit of the shrub had hesitated whether it might not be 
distinct from Empetrum, led Mr. Nuttall (in Herb. nostr.) to 
pronounce it certainly of a different genus. It was still to 
Ceratiola that both these eminent botanists looked; and I 
have found on the Newfoundland specimen from Mr. 
Lambert’s Herbarium, a like reference of that plant to 
the above genus, and even to the old Linnean species 
ericoides, in the handwriting of the late Prof. Don. In this 
state of uncertainty the plant remained, till it came to the 
notice of Dr. Klotzsch, to whom it owes its now well-settled 
rank as a genus, 
The geographical range of this shrub is as yet too imper- 
fectly known to allow us to hazard any limits ; still, enough 
has, perhaps, been ascertained to make it probable that its 
northern boundary will not far exceed Newfoundland, nor its 
southern New Jersey. All the recent additions to its history 
have been made in the north, and the southern states have 
had too many and careful explorers to leave as much room 
for hope in that direction. First discovered in New Jersey; 
where it is found in the sands of Monmouth county, it came 
next to notice on the south-eastern shores of New England, 
affording there (abortive) fruit, which had not been observed 
