578 Praia.—A Review of the Genera 
receptacular glands in the male flower, the disposition of which is employed 
in defining the sections, happen to vary somewhat, and to be, as Mueller 
himself has admitted (DC. Prodr., xv. 2, 775), small and hard to see. This 
treatment is too severe. Mueller did not rely exclusively upon the disposi¬ 
tion of these glands in arriving at the limits of his sections. His primary 
subdivision is based on the presence or absence of perulae, a character which 
enabled him to separate his two first sections from the other four ; Micro - 
cocca , which is one of these non-perulate sections, has been distinguished 
from the remaining three by characters unconnected with these glands. 
Mueller has, indeed, employed the character derived from the buds with 
considerable restraint; Hooker, who first called attention to it, in 1862 
expressed the opinion (Journ. Linn. Soc., vi. 20) that the character probably 
has a generic significance. But whatever the precise value of the character 
may be, the fact that Bentham has not alluded to it does not render it 
negligible. Pax, in 1890 (Nat. Pflanzenf., iii. 5, 48), while agreeing with 
Bentham as regards the treatment of Micrococca , has not followed the latter 
in ignoring Mueller’s sections. But in considering Mueller’s arrangement 
sufficiently practicable to warrant its retention, Pax has hardly been so critical 
as he might ; the truth lies between his view and that of Bentham. The 
glands on the receptacle do supply quite valuable characters. But the 
evidence which these glands afford does not always justify the conclusions 
arrived at by Mueller, and even when allowance is made for the fact that 
these glands were not, as Bentham states, used primarily ( imprimis ) in 
delimiting Mueller’s sections, there is no doubt that undue reliance has been 
placed upon them for this purpose. 
The fact that the suppression of Micrococca has been proposed while no 
such suggestion has been made as regards Erythrococca renders it desirable 
to deal with the former before discussing the latter. This necessity therefore 
entails our discussing first those sections of Claoxylon , proposed by Mueller, 
which agree with Micrococca in having buds that are not provided with 
coriaceous bud-scales. 
The Non-perulate Claoxyla. 
The section Discoclaoxylon , Muell. arg., which includes three species 
that are confined to West Africa and Central Africa, is extremely natural 
and distinct; the treatment accorded to it by Mueller has been fully con¬ 
firmed by the more complete material reported since it was proposed. In 
this case the character derived from the receptacular glands appears to 
possess all the weight which Mueller has attributed to it. 
The section Gymnoclaoxylon , Muell. arg., which includes two Polynesian 
species that agree in facies with the bulk of those referred to Euclaoxylon , 
illustrates on the other hand the justice of Bentham’s criticism. One of 
