MAXON: ON THE IDENTITY OF CYATHEA MULTIFLORA 547 
= Cyathea multiflora Sir J. E. Smith in Act. Taur. 5. p. 416. 
= Amphicosmia multiflora G. Gardner in London 
Journ. of Bot. r. 1842, p. 441. Cf. this last 
reference, pp. 438-442. Our plant agrees 
with Gardner’s description, Pp. 439.— 
But Sir J. E. Smith says ‘ Jamaica, ex herb. Banks’ 
(fide Hook. Sp. Fil. z. 32), while our specimen 
bears ‘America merid. R. Shakespeare.’ And 
no other specimen appears to have come from 
Jamaica. Shakespeare did collect in Jamaica 
about 1780. If this is the type, the locality 
‘ Jamaica’ may be at fault. 
From a careful comparison of the two pinnules sent, and 
of the photograph, with the large series of specimens in the U. S. 
National Herbarium, the following statements may safely be 
made: 
1. The original specimens in the Banks Collection, British 
Museum, from which the three type pinne of Cyathea multi- 
flora J. E. Smith were taken, are from a rather small frond of a 
species described later upon Central American material as Hemi- 
telia nigricans Presl. 
2. Smith’s statement of the type locality of C. multiflora as 
‘Jamaica ’’ is without much doubt erroneous, since: (a) The 
original Banks specimens are marked as from ‘‘ America merid.”’; 
(6) in all the botanical exploration carried on subsequently in 
Jamaica the species has not been there collected; (c) Hemitelia 
nigricans is a widespread though not very common species of 
the Atlantic coast of the mainland, extending from Guatemala, 
through Nicaragua to Costa Rica and Panama (and in all prob- 
ability farther, along the northern coast of South America), 
and may reasonably be supposed to include specimens gathered 
by chance at almost any point along the Atlantic coast mentioned. 
Even if there were no confusion as to the locality for the original 
specimens of C. multiflora, their identity with H. nigricans can 
not be oe as the following notes are intended to make 
clear. 
Hemitelia nigricans was described in 1849* by Presl from speci- 
mens said to have been collected by Friedrichsthal ‘‘ upon the 
banks of the river San Juan, in Guatemala.’’ Fournier, however, 
* Presl, Epin. “Bot. 31. 1840. 
