46 Mr. J. Miers on the 'Tricuspidariee. 
Symb. iii. 67 ;—Dicera? serrata, Forst. Prodr. 227; DC. 
Prodr. i. 520; A. Rich. Hl. Nov. Zel. 8304 :—Aristotelia ra- 
cemosa, Hook. fil. I'l. N. Zel. i. p. 33.—In Nova Zelandia. 
3. Lriesia fruticosa ;—Aristotelia truticosa, Hook. fil. l.c. p. 34. 
—In Nova Zelandia. 
4. Friesia Chinensis, Gardn. & Champ. in Hook. Kew Journ. 
i. 243.—In ins. Hong Kong. 
3. VALLEA. 
This genus, proposed by Mutis, was first established by 
Linneus, in the Supplement to his ‘Systema.’ Its floral 
characters were figured and described in the ‘ Flora Peruviana 3’ 
and the genus was afterwards better illustrated by Kunth. 
Most botanists have placed Vallea in the Hleocarpee ; but 
the authors of the new ‘Genera Plantarum’ have arranged it 
in their tribe Sloanew, on account of the “subliigneous muri- 
cated capsule.” But there is very little resemblance in the 
pericarp of this genus to that of Sloanea and its allied genera, 
where, in a dry capsular fruit, the valves are thick, ligneous, 
and densely covered with long spines or rigid hairs. It is not 
correct to say that the pericarp of Vallea is muricated; on 
the contrary, the fruit is baccate, the mesocarp being thick, 
soft, and fleshy, covered by a thim membranaceous epicarp, 
which is corrugated in the form of many fleshy obtuse tuber- 
cles; this dries upon the testaceous endocarp after the fall of 
the fruit, when it becomes impertectly dehiscent at its summit. 
I have seen the fruit in an unripe state only, when the seeds 
have not been sufticiently perfected to ascertain the nature of 
the integuments ; but a longitudinal section through the centre 
shows that the edges of the dissepiments are firmly ageluti- 
nated upan a solid central column that rises to three-quarters 
of the length of the cells, the remaining upper portions being 
separated by a hollow space; and it is this which limits the 
small extent of the apical dehiscence of the fruit when it be- 
comes quite dried. ‘his structure is analogous to that in 
Lricuspidaria; but there the axile column scarcely rises above 
the base; so that the edges of the dissepiments, being un- 
restrained, admit of a considerable extent of divarication of the 
valves. In Aristotelia this central column rises to two-thirds 
ot the length of the cell; but the endocarp is of too thin a 
texture to give sufficient elasticity to the parts, after they be- 
come dried, to cause its dehiscence. It will appear, therefore, 
that Vallea ought to stand close to Aristotelia, as it possesses 
all the essential characters of the Lleocarpee : it has the calyx 
and petals of Hivesia, a disk very different from any of the 
Sloanee, the stamens, ovary, style, and stigma as in Aristo- 
