65 
Second Systematic Census of Australian Plants, with Chronologic, 
Literary and Geographic Annotations. By Baron Ferdinand 
von Mueller. (Part I. Vasculares, ‘4to, pp. 244. Melbourne, 
1889). ! 
This is a systematic enumeration of all species of flowering 
plants and Pteridophyta, known at the present time to inhabit 
Australia. The sequence of orders is somewhat different from 
those used by other recent authors; Baron Mueller dividing the 
Dicotyledonz into (1) Choripetalee Hypogyne, (2) Choripetalee 
Perigyne, (3) Synpetalee Perigynz, (4) Synpetalee Hypogyne, 
(5)Apetalee Gymnosperme. This grouping does away entirely 
with the artificial class Apetale. The Monocotyledone are 
divided into (1) Eucalycez Perigyne, (2) Eucalycee Hvpogyne, 
(3) Acalycee Hypogynz. The total number of species listed is 
8839. ow LB. 
Recent Research among Fossil Plants. M. de Saporta. Rev. gen. 
de Bot. II, 1890. 
In a recent number of Nature, (Sept. 25th, 1890), J. Starkie 
Gardner gives a review of the above which reads as follows ;— 
It appears that mosses were almost certainly represented in the 
Palzeozoics, a species allied to Polytrichum having been discovered 
at Commentry in France. Rarely as the fructification of ferns is 
preserved in the coal-measures, twenty species are now inyesti- 
gated, confirming the view that the Paleozoic species differed 
widely from the present, the vast order Polypodiacee and the 
Cyathee being unrepresented. The view that the Ca/amarias 
were in part Gymnosperms is all but universally abandoned, and 
the close affinity of the Lepidodendrons and Sigil/arias and their 
cryptogamic nature everywhere admitted. Links in the chain of 
evolution between Cryptogams and Gymnosperms still elude our ~ 
search, and the earliest vegetation of which we have any complete 
knowledge already presents well-developed Gymnosperms in the 
shape of the deciduous Cordaites, a few Cycads and obscure 
fe axads allied to ha 
