390 THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY 



The same author has, during last year, commenced a series of 

 lithographic illustrations of the genus Eucalyptus. Ten of these 

 have already appeared, of species from all parts of Australia, and 

 clearly figuring the flowers, seed vessels, seeds, &c. of forms 

 described in the Flora Australiensis and Fragments. This work 

 will, when completed, have done much to clear up the mystery 

 which surrounds the genus, and set before the world the true 

 character of its component species — a task which the " Flora " 

 cannot be said to have achieved. 



We cannot omit reference to a lecture delivered by the Baron 

 in the Presbyterian Church of West Melbourne in August last, 

 in which he earnestly advocates the advancement of the Natural 

 Sciences through the aid of Ministers of the Christian Church. 

 The lecture contains a synopsis of the growth of Natural Science, 

 which cannot but be interesting to all. 



The same author has also published a School Botany for 

 Australia, which, though a valuable work and excellently 

 illustrated, is of too technical a character for the particular 

 service for which it is intended. 



A work has been lately published in San Francisco upon 

 " Forest Culture and Eucalyptus Trees," which shows the 

 importance attached in California to the cultivation of those 

 trees which Australians are too carelessly destroying in their 

 original habitats. 



In New Zealand, where the national importance of Natural 

 Science is better understood than in the Australian Colonies, the 

 9th, 10th, and 11th Reports of Geological Explorations during 

 the years 1874-1877 have been recently published. They 

 contain a vast amount of exact information, which may become 

 of very great importance in the determination of the isochronism, 

 as yet little known, of the Australasian formations. 



The attention of the Scientific world has now for several years 

 been almost absorbed in subjects in which demonstration is pro- 

 bably impossible, and of which the discussion has as yet produced 

 more excitement than conviction. There is certainly manifest 

 among scientific men a degree of violence in argument, and an 



