i 
Mr. J. Miers on Villaresia. 109 
which they attribute to the work of insects; but this is not pro- 
bable, because these porous glands present themselves regularly 
in the axils, exactly in the same position, and appear as con- 
stantly in the several Brazilian species as in those of Chilian 
growth. Sometimes the base of the nerve, where it joins the 
midrib, is expanded like a lamellar plate, forming a hollow pouch 
beneath it, with the porous aperture in its mouth; generally the 
hollow within the parenchyma is not much larger than the open 
pore itself. 
Villaresia was considered to be a genus peculiar to Chile, but 
it has since been found in the Banda Oriental and in Southern 
Brazil, and even within the tropics as far as 15° S. lat. These 
Brazilian plants have all been considered by Reisseck as identical 
with the type of Chilian growth ; but the characters here given 
show them to be specifically distinct. In habit they all much 
resemble those of J/ex, the leaves in some species of both genera 
being often spinoso-dentate ; in others they are quite entire. It 
is probable that they contain theine, as in Ilex Paraguayensis 
and other species of that genus; for the leaves of the [lex Con- 
gonha of Martius, which is a species of Villaresia, are used in 
Brazil as tea, the Brazilian term congonha being synonymous 
with the word yerba, as the tea of Paraguay is called. It may 
sometimes be difficult to distinguish the plants of Villaresia from 
those of J/ex; but a ready test is always ‘to be observed in the 
flower, the pistil in the former genus being furnished with a 
lengthened style, while in the latter the stigma is always quite 
sessile: the fruit of the one can never be confounded with that 
of the other. Many of the Brazilian species have much larger 
and thinner leaves, and the inflorescence is frequently terminal 
in subfasciculated spikes: they bear much the appearance of 
Leretia, a Brazilian genus of the Jcacinacee—a family differing 
chiefly from the Aquifoliacee in the estivation of the corolla and 
the mode of development of the fruit. In the before-mentioned 
species of Villaresia growing at Kew, where some of its flowers 
had a 2-celled ovary, with two ovules in each cell, suspended 
from the summit of the dissepiment, I found that, in this case, 
it had two styles. 
All the species belonging to the genus form erect trees having 
straight trunks, with copious frondose heads; but Prof. Reisseck 
states, in his generic diagnosis (in Mart. Flor. Bras, fase. xxviii. 
p. 75), that the plants are sometimes scandent. From this it may 
be inferred that he alludes to the Villaresia scandens of Hasskar] ; 
but that plant (from Java) cannot belong to the genus, nor even 
to the same family *. 
* In Retzia, i. 152; Walp. Ann. iv. 431: it differs from Villaresia in its 
scandent habit, its 2-locular ovarium with only a single pendent ovule in 
