58 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
it agreed so thoroughly with the figure and description of H. ovigera given by 
Gaertner, Eoxburgh, not having in his possession specimens of the true H. ovigera^ 
followed Gaertner in bestowing that name on this species. This com’se was hardly 
just to Emnf if Gaertner and Eoxbm’gh believed Eumf’s figure to be correct, 
hardly just to themselves if they had any grounds for supposing it to be erro¬ 
neous. It now appears that Emnf’s figure is wonderfully rehable, for, besides his 
figm’e from a tree iu Amboina, there are before the writer specimens of un¬ 
doubtedly this species from Java (Zollinger n. 2861, which, however, ZoUinger 
liimself has identified with H, sonord) and specimens recently collected by the 
officers of the “ Egeria ” in Christmas Island, where E. ovigera occm’S 
(Hemsl., Journ. Linn. Soc., xxv, 857) on the summit, elevation about 1,200 feet, 
a rather remarkable fact, since, according to Eumf, it occurs, like the other 
Hernandias, “ semper in arenoso solo circa litoraN^ 
As has been remarked, the belief of Linnaeus, and of Eoxbm-gh that Eumf s 
Arlor regis is a Eernandia is probably partly justified, for it is possible, from his 
account of the habitat of his tree—“ ocairrit tarn in litare inter leves ac humiles 
^‘silvas ” (quite the situation affected by Eernandiapeltata) “ guam in mojitibus 
“ et altioribus silvis ” (where to find E. peltata would be somewhat surprising) — 
that Eumf has iuoluded two trees in his description. His figm’e, moreover, bears 
out this, for some of the leaves are without, while others exhibit, a pan’ of glands 
where the petiole joins the leaf. The figm’e as a whole, however, suggests at once, 
as Lamarck {Encyc. Metli., iii, 123) a century ago pointed out, a Euphorbiaceous 
plant, while Rumf’s description of the fruit is altogether suitable to that of a 
species of this order. The first authors to recognise Rumf’s Arbor regis, 
however, were Teysmann and Binnendyk, who described it as Capellmia moluccana 
{Nat. Tijds. Ned. Ind., xxix, 239), founding a new genus to accommodate it; as, 
however, Capellmia does not differ generically from Endospermum, the tree has 
been re-described by Beccari as Endospermum moluccmum {Malesia, ii, 38) in his 
treatise Piawfe Ospitatrici, where another species from Hew Guinea {Endospermum 
formicarum Becc., Malesia, ii, 44, t. 2) is described, which shares with Eumf’s 
tree the character of sheltering a species of ant in its hollowed stems and branches. 
Teysmann and Binnendyk described their species from trees grown in the Botanic 
Garden at Buitenzorg ; Beccari does not mention the habitat of the Hew 
* Two parallel instances known to the writer of littoral species ascending to a con¬ 
siderable height are met with in N arcondam, where MorincLa Iracteata ascends to 2,300 
feet and in Barren Island, where Terminalia Catappa ascends 1,100 feet. The expla¬ 
nation of all three cases is doubtless the same ; these “ littoral” species being amongst the 
first to appear on the respective islands were able to spread unchecked from the shore to 
the summit of their peaks, and the invasion of inland species has not subsequently 
been sufficiently great to compel them to retire completely from the unusual localities 
they had at first invaded. 
358 
