418 THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 
stalked, and sometimes entire or serrated, dilated at their base, 
overlapping each other and half sheathing their stem, without a 
midrib, but with veins radiating from the base. The flowers, 
generally monopetalous, are white or purple, borne in spikes or 
terminal racemes; but not unfrequently the corolla is divided, 
giving them a polypetalous appearance. All the fruit-bearing 
section, such as the Australian Cranberries (Lissanthe sapida), are 
esculent, but the seeds are large and the pulpy covering too thin 
to be available for food. The Tasmanian Cranberry (Astroloma 
humifusum) is found all over that colony; the fruit, generally 
greenish white in hue, is sometimes slightly red, and about the 
size of a Black Currant, consisting of a viscid pulp, apple- 
flavoured, and enclosing a large seed. It grows singly on a 
trailing stem. The native Currant (Leucopodium Richet) is a 
large, densely foliaged shrub, growing on the sea-coast to the 
height of seven feet; the berries small, white, and of a herby 
flavour. A French naturalist, named Riche, who accompanied 
the expedition in search of La Perouse, was lost for three days 
on the south coast of Australia, and supported himself chiefly 
_ upon the berries of this plant. 
The genus Epacris scarcely differ from the small-leaved genera 
of Ericetals either in habit or character, except that in the former 
the anthers are two-celled. Dr. Brown was the founder of the 
order, and his reason was that the family of the Ericacez is NOW 
so vast that it seems to constitute a class rather than an order. 
“2 may therefore,” he says, “be allowed to propose another order, _ 
Epacridee, which is truly natural, although it depends upon the 
single character of the unusual simplicity of the anthers—a cha- 
racter, however, which is of the greater value as being opposed to 
the two-celled anthers of Erices, which are generally divided and 
furnished with appendages. The propriety of the measure 18 
moreover confirmed, not only by the number of Epacridee, large 
as it is, but also by their geographical position, for all, as far as 
we know them at present, are inhabitants of Australia and Poly- 
nesia—countries in which not more than one or two species © 
Ericez are found.” 
The Pyrolacee, Francoacee, and Monotropacee, though placed 
by botanists among the group of Heaths, differ very widely from 
