275 



DESCRIPTION. 



LXXIII. E. oleosa F.v.M. 



Miq. in Ned, Kruidk Arch, iv, 128 (1856). 



This is another species where improved knowledge has shown that accumulations have 

 gathered round the original description, and require to be pruned away. In the present 

 case, the development of the seedlings has been of the very greatest assistance, and I 

 trust that, in this work, I may be able ere long to publish the interesting results of over 

 twenty years of continuous observations in this direction. 



The revision of an old species is somewhat analogous to building a house. If 

 one has an indubitably new species, the work is plain— new plan, new bricks, and so on. 

 But where a species has to be reconstructed, or rather, where additions must be removed 

 which have become more or less incorporated in the old structure, the fresh plan for 

 two or more houses to be built out of the enlarged old one necessitates the pulling down, 

 more or less, of the original structure, removal of the additions which have been wrongly 

 placed in and outside the fabric, and the replacement of these, perhaps, with other 

 materials. Call these additions bricks, and one is reminded of the saying of an architect 

 or a builder, that it is often easier to build a new house from new materials, than to 

 reconstruct. 



Following is a translation of the original description, quoted in Part IX, p. 165, 

 where I give the warning that it refers to mixed material, and give some notes on the 

 synonymy. 



E. oleosa F. Mull., E. perforata Behr Herb., partly. Has affinity with E. stricta Sieb. Marble 

 Range (Wilhelmi) ; Murray Scrub (Dr. Behr). 



A shrub, branchlets angular, leaves narrow lanceolate or sublinear, extending into a hooked point, 

 everywhere finely sphacelate (?), narrowed at the base, mostly inaequilateral, coriaceous, covered thickly 

 with shining glands, veins somewhat obscure, erect and spreading, umbels axillary, 1-10 flowered, 

 supported by an angular peduncle, flowers shortly pedicellate or subsessile, operculum conical-hemispherical, 

 somewhat obtuse, about the same length as the obconical-turbinate tube. 



" A shrub as high as a man, branches and leaves a cheerful shining green " (Behr). Branchlets 

 angular, pale whitish, or when younger, deep brownish. Petioles 3-4 lines long, somewhat yellowish when 

 dry. Leaves 14-2^ generally about 2 inches long, 2-3 lines broad, straight or oblique. Peduncles scarcely 

 2 lines long. Calyx 1 J- lines long, often somewhat longer than the operculum, pale. Filaments pale. (Miq. 

 in Ned. Kruidk. Arch, iv, 128, 1856.) 



Illustrations. — This species need not be illustrated at this place, since the following 

 illustrations in the present work are available. Plate 65, figs. 2a, 26; 6a, 66; 4/, 4y, 

 4Ji; la, lb; 8a, 8b; 9; 10a, 106, 10c; 11a, 116; 12a to a; together with Plate 19 

 (Part IV), fig. 5. 



