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VEGETATION OF VICTORIA. 311 
The entire sum of species contained in the accompanying list, com- 
prising, for the first time also, the lower Cryptogamie orders, amounts 
to 726, with 250 additional genera, by which the number of Victorian 
plants enumerated last year will be advanced to nearly 1700 really 
indigenous species, comprehending 680 genera and 134 Natural Or- 
ders,—numbers to be considered already as proportionately high for 
the extra-tropical latitudes and the area of this colony. It is probable 
that these comprise more than three-fourths of the indigenous plants, 
if we exclude Fungi, of which it is yet impossible to ascertain the 
number with any approach to correctness. In the compilation of 
that part of the catalogue which contains the lower Acotyledonee, Y 
have enjoyed the services of some botanists of the highest rank, who 
made these branches of phytology their more exclusive study, and 
whose assistance I most gratefully record on this occasion. Messrs. 
Hampe and C. Müller performed the examination of the Mosses; 
Professor Al. Braun that of the Okaracee, and Dr. W. Sonder, for the 
greater part, that of the Ælgæ. I have further to acknowledge the aid 
Which I experienced in the classification of others of these difficult 
plants from Professor Harvey, of King’s College, Dublin, who intends 
to pursue his algological researches during this summer on our shores, 
and from whose long experience and extensive knowledge we may ex- 
pect the most perfect elucidation of our Marine Flora. 
The general proportions of Dicotyledonous plants to Monocotyle- 
donee remain, by the additional species of this year, mainly unaltered, 
namely, about seven to two, as formerly stated, in the southern and 
south-eastern parts of the colony; although, by a decrease of Monocoty- 
ledonee in the north-western desert, an approach is perceptible there 
to that relation which these divisions of the vegetable kingdom bear to 
each other in Western Australia and in the sub-tropical part of South 
Australia. The series, however, of Natural Orders, with reference to 
their greatest number of species, received considerable alteration by the 
large increase of the Composite and several other orders in the desert 
tracts, and by the disappearance again, at various places, of other 
groups which predominated in the south. But, as nearly all the main 
localities have now been traversed, the series of the most prevailing 
Natural Orders may be at this time considered fixed for the whole 
colony, in the following arrangement, if we omit, as not yet sufficiently 
examined, the lower Acotyledonee, namely,— Composite, Leguminose, 
