THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 67 



Possibly the plant may be sometimes of more than one year's 

 duration, but it never forms the finally thick rhizome of S. diander; 

 moreover, as pointed out already — 1862, in the "Plants of the 

 Colony of Victoria," i, 216 — its flowers are neither much crowded 

 together nor almost sessile, the tube of the calyx is not obconical, 

 the lobes of the calyx are narrower, almost pungent, more 

 spreading, also proportionately longer, and the seeds are less 

 globular. Besides these differences, it should be mentioned, that 

 S. minusculus is always a lowland-plant, likes warm tracts of country, 

 and is usually of smaller size ; while iS. diander is here generally 

 an upland-plant, ascending to 4,000 feet, although in the cool 

 and humid clime of Tasmania it occupies also localities close to 

 the seashore, and so Mr. Fullagar has found it even on the 

 Werribee, in Victoria. The outward appearance of S. minusculus 

 is almost that of the small form of .S". annum. 



MlCRANTHEUM DEMISSUM. 



Dwarf; branchlets beset with short spreading hairlets ; leaves 

 ovate- or lanceolar-elliptic, generally soon almost glabrous, at the 

 margin hardly or narrowly recurved ; pistillate flowers axillary, 

 solitary ; sepals longer than the pedicel, almost elliptic ; fruit 

 hardly thrice longer than the sepals, nearly ovate, at the base 

 blunt, towards the summit more attenuated ; seeds brownish, 

 shining ; strophiole pale, turgid, nearly semiovate, about thrice 

 shorter than the seed. 



Near Encounter-Bay and in Kangaroo-Island ; Professor 

 Tate, O. Tepper. Closely allied to M. ericoides, but still more 

 dwarfed, the leaves mostly broader, the pedicels usually shorter, 

 the sepals somewhat larger, the styles less elongated and the 

 fruit smaller ; perhaps the staminate flowers will also prove 

 different. M. hexandra, to which the South-Australian species 

 was in first instance referred chiefly on geographic considerations, 

 is a tall highland-plant, larger in all its part and thus already 

 quite distinct ; it produces stamens up to nine in number. Both 

 M. ericoides and M. hexandrum were found on the Clyde by Mr. 

 Baeuerlen, but at different altitudes. 



Hemigenia Biddulphiana. 



Rather dwarf, almost glabrous except the flowers ; leaves on 

 very short petioles, comparatively large, simply opposite or some 

 placed ternately, mostly lanceolar, flat or at the margin slightly 

 recurved; flowers in the axils solitary or two together, on very short 

 pedicels; calyx outside conspicuously beset with spreading glandule- 

 bearing hairlets, its lobes hardly half as long as the tube, almost 

 equal, deltoid and somewhat acuminate; corolla nearly thrice as long 

 as the calyx, outside upwards beset with minute spreading hairlets, 

 inside near the orifice bearing crisp hairlets, its lowest lobe scarcely 

 longer than the lateral lobes ; anthers of the upper stamens one- 



