585 
Erythrococca and Micrococca. 
Thwaites, nor does it detract from the value of the still more important 
character afforded by the inflorescence for which we are indebted to Hooker. 
By means of these two characters Hooker has brought together, and has 
enabled others to augment, a compact and natural group of species which, 
when treated as Hooker has treated it, as a section of Claoxylon, proves to 
be much more distinct and far more easily separated from Euclaoxylon than 
Mueller believed it to be. So well characterized is this group and so clearly 
is it defined by the characters which Thwaites and Hooker have supplied, 
that the suppression of the genus Micrococca , so far from having been 
definitely effected, has become once more open to discussion. 1 The se¬ 
gregation of Micrococca has not been shown to be impossible ; it has, 
instead, been made more simple. Since whatever tends to facilitate the 
separation of Micrococca makes for the acceptance of the view held by 
Bentham in preference to that adopted by Mueller, we are at liberty to 
inquire whether, in spite of the inadequacy of the criteria on which reliance 
was placed, the judgement of Bentham may not, after all, have been the 
sounder. Even if we concede that, in the light of the characters employed 
by Hooker, the evidence for and against the views held by Bentham and 
Mueller respectively is so evenly balanced as to justify either, one has only 
to look at the fruit in order to realize that Bentham’s instinct was right. In 
Claoxylon , and in Erythrococca as well, the capsules have coriaceous walls 
which at first open loculicidally, the two valves of each coccus gaping to 
expose the seed. At a later stage the segments of the capsule break away 
septifragally from the relatively wide coriaceous columella. In Micrococca , 
however, the capsules, with thin crustaceous walls, open simultaneously 
both loculicidally and septicidally, and thus break up into 2-valved cocci, 
leaving behind them a slender woody columella. The nature of its fruit 
dispels all doubt as to the validity of the genus Micrococca and renders its 
differentiation from Claoxylon and Erythrococca a far simpler matter than 
the separation of these two genera from each other. 
The Perulate Claoxyla. 
The two Muellerian sections of Claoxylon which have still to be con¬ 
sidered are Adenoclaoxylon , Muell. arg. (1864), and Athroandra, Hook. f. 
(1862), as modified by Mueller in 1866. These two sections agree with 
each other and differ from Discoclaoxylon , Gymnoclaoxylon , Euclaoxylon , and 
Micrococca in having perulate buds. It is convenient to deal with them 
1 It is largely because Thwaites was justified in referring Claoxylon oligandrum and Micrococca 
Mercurialis to one genus that there is a doubt as to the limits of that genus. This doubt is due to the 
uncertainty regarding the former species. Throughout its history the position of the latter has been 
much discussed, but its specific limits have been tolerably clearly understood. But, in the case of 
C. oligandrum, Mueller had to point out in 1866 that its specific identity had been misunderstood 
both by Baillon and by Thwaites, while in 1887 Hooker had to indicate that its position and its 
affinity had been equally misunderstood by Mueller. 
