72 WILLOWS OF THE EAST INDIES. 
bourhood of Adelaide, where the Australian grass, now growing only 
in scattered tufts, has made way for a thick turf of Poa annua, Briza, 
Keleria, ete. That the cultivation of grain, which has so completely 
transformed one part of the wilderness of Australia, has already exer- 
cised so beneficial an influence on the increase of the rain, may serve 
as an indieation of the probable results from the diffusion of the no- 
madic grasses in the desert interior of New Holland, the full importance 
of which can scarcely be predicted, or even perhaps imagined. 
Ost-INDIENS HITTILLS KANDA PrLARTER. (The Willows of the East 
Indies hitherto known.) By N.J. ANDERSON. Presented on the 
llth of March, 1851, to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stock- 
holm, and printed in their Transactions for 1850. Stockholm, 1851, 
p. 465. Translated by Dr. Warrrcn, V.P. Royal and Linn. Soc. 
Having had an opportunity last year to examine the Willows pre- 
served in the botanical collections at Berlin, Paris, and London, partly 
in order to study authentic specimens, and partly to obtain materials 
fora monograph of the genus, which l have in hand, I met with a 
not inconsiderable number of new and hitherto undescribed species, 
throwing much additional light on the question of its extension and 
forms in different parts of the world. No country however received 
such an increase of its Willow-flora as the East Indies, twenty-two 
entirely new and undescribed species being added to the six already 
known species. 
It is of importance that contributions towards a more complete ac- 
quaintance with certain widely spread and interesting groups of plants 
should be published, and attention directed not only to what is sup- 
posed to be known already, but also to those gaps which may thereby 
become more manifest. I therefore present my descriptions of such 
East Indian Willows as have come under my observation to the Royal 
Academy of Sciences, in order that they may be published in the Trans- 
actions, if deemed worthy of it. 
To my knowledge only six species have hitherto been more or less 
described from that extensive country; namely, Salix tetrasperma of 
Roxburgh’s Plants of the coast of Coromandel; 5. disperma (doubtful), 
