432 Proceedings of the Royal Fhysical Society. 



of this wood becomes water-logged, and sinks in three days. 

 We came on one specimen about twenty feet high ; it was in 

 full flower, and proved to be leguminous. The flowers are 

 provided with a large orange vexillum, small green alse 

 veined with red, and long crimson stamens ; the leaves are 

 broadly ovate, rather dull-green in colour, and have a hairy 

 lower surface. The whole tree is thorny ; the fruit is a 

 long pod. Mr Lea heroically scrambled up after the flowers, 

 despite the thorns, and got some down in triumph. There 

 are no other trees of any considerable size, except cocoa-nnt 

 palms and a few other cultivated forms ; but there are large 

 numbers of shrubs. Among them is a Begonia, with fine 

 large flowers, white mottled with pink, and just two spots of 

 yellow on one lip ; there are also some shrubby capers, 

 which flower very shyly, so that it is very difficult to get 

 them open. We observed a shrub, with leaves dark-green 

 and glossy above and whitish beneath, having inconspicuous 

 brown flowers, probably euphorbiaceous, and also belonging 

 to the same order, the Jatropha gossypifolia of Webster, 

 which may attain the size of a tree, but we seldom saw any 

 larger than a shrub. It has palmately-lobed, smooth, green 

 leaves, and bunches of flowers with a pale yellow perianth, 

 touched with crimson on the outside. A first cousin of this 

 plant, Jatropha itrens, only reached the condition of a tall 

 herb; it has white flowers, and its leaves and stem are 

 covered with long, stinging hairs. There were several other 

 shrubs, the names of which I did not know, some being very 

 fragrant. The endemic Oxalis Noronhm had often a shrubby 

 habit. The flowers are about half an inch across the coralla, 

 and of a bright yellow. They come out at night, and close 

 in the forenoon ; by the afternoon nothing is t© be seen but 

 shrivelled flowers and buds. The leaves are green and velvet- 

 like. Another endemic plant, Pisonia darwinii, has an 

 almost shrubby habit. The flower stem is crimson, the 

 inflorescence a scraggy pannicle, and the flowers themselves 

 small, with two greenish sepals, or bracts ; and, within these, 

 five pink perianth segments. Then come numerous stamens, 

 the filaments crimson, the anthers yellow, and an ovary with 

 crimson stigmata ; the leaves are fleshy, glossy, green, ovate, 



