28 RECORDS OF OBSERVATIONS ON SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR § 
characteristics, those of our new plant not being yet ascertainable. G. decemfida 
has stem-leaves much like those of the Papuan species; but its basal leaves are 
much larger, whereby the plant obtains a very different aspect, its flowers are 
considerably smaller, and have bifid appendages. 
Baron Constantin von Ettingshausen, the renowned paleontologist in Gratz, 
having done me the honour of giving my name to a fossil undubitable species of Alder, 
discovered by Mr. Johnston in Tasmania, I avail myself of this opportunity for 
reciprocating by connecting his name now with the only Gentian as yet known from 
New Guinea, of which that distinguished investigator may often be reminded by 
the several beautiful Gentians surrounding him in Styria. 
Alyxia semipallescens. 
Branchlets beset with a thin vestiture consisting of somewhat papillular hairlets; 
leaves rather small, ternately whorled, on very short stalks, lanceolar-obovate, nearly 
blunt, glabrous, entire, slightly wrinked and shining above, very pale and quite 
smooth beneath, almost flat; pedicels often solitary, quite short, angular; calyx 
minute, its lobes cymbiform-semilanceolar ; tube of the corolla nearly thrice as long 
as the lobes, in its upper part turgid, inside slightly beset with hairlets; stamens 
inserted near the middle of the corolla-tube ; filaments nearly as long as the anthers, 
very thin; anthers gradually attenuated upwards; style capillary, glabrous; stigma 
turgid towards the summit; ovulary glabrous. 
Summits of Mount Musgrave. 
Leaves very firm, two-thirds to one and a third inches long, almost whitish on 
the underside and there no veinlets visible except the carinular one. Corolla only 
a quarter of an inch long, slender. Fruit not obtained, and only one flower here seen. 
The difference of the colouration of the upper and lower side of the leaves is in this 
species greater than in any other; it seems also to adscend higher elevations, than 
those attamed by any congeners. 
A. buxifolia is allied, but that is a coast-species, reaching besides litoral deserts 
only, extending however the limits of the genus far beyond the tropics, indeed to 
Tasmania; its leaves are often simply opposite, its flowers more numerous and 
considerably larger, its anthers almost sessile. 
A. obtusifolia has somewhat larger leaves of less firmness, much more copious 
flowers with proportionately shorter corolla-tube. 
A. Sinensis has the edge of the leaves more recurved, a different inflorescence 
with shorter corollas, but is nearest in affinity to the Papuan plant; the fruit of the 
three species, here compared, may also be different. 
