| 
| 
| 
. 
4 
¢ 
the Portuguese appellation of one of the Ceylon species, 
Bocca preto, or Black Mouth, which arose from the effect 
of the fruit upon the mouth of those who eat it. Some of 
the West Indian species are known by the name of ‘ Ame- 
rican Gooseberries.’” Smith in Rees’s cyclop. in loc. 
SirJames Smith, in the above article, very justly doubted 
whether the plant given in Curtis's Botanical Magazine 
(529) for Metastoma malabathrica really belonged to that 
species; for a comparison with the prototype sample in the 
Hermanns’ Herbarium has proved it manifestly different. 
In the plant of the Magazine the leayes are ovately lan- 
ceolate, broader, longer, shining, 7-nerved, and less hispid ; 
in our plant, the true malabathrica, they are elliptically 
lanceolate, 5-nerved, and opaque; in that the branches are 
beset with longish cartilaginous spreading flexile bristles, in 
this with small hard brown lanceolately cuspidate ciliate 
close-pressed scales ; in that the larger calyx and longer 
peduncles are thickly beset with spreading cartilaginous 
flexile spinelike bristles; in ¢his the same are thickly 
scaled and have a silky or rather pearly gloss; besides by 
the first being much smaller and the latter much shorter; 
in that the flowers are likewise considerably larger and 
paler. In fact no two congeners can be more satisfactorily 
distinguishable. 
It appears that the true species was cultivated by Miller. 
The plant of the Botanical Magazine was introduced by 
Sir George Staunton in 1795, most probably from China. - 
The subject of the present article was drawn by Mr. Syden- 
ham Edwards, at the Nursery of Messrs. Whitley and Co. 
in the King’s Road, Fulham, and had been raised from 
seed sent from the East Indies by Sir Evan Nepean, four 
or five years ago. It is a hothouse plant. There is another 
nearly allied species with a larger flower than that of either 
of those we have mentioned, of a still more recent intro- 
duction, viz. Mrxasroma sanguinea. 
M. aspera is likewise an East Indian species nearly akin 
to malabathrica, but with far smaller leaves and a panicled 
inflorescence: this has the curious scaly pubescence of the 
present species. Don MSS. 
