Ai'ftiL h iB&f'i ^HE TnOPXQAh AGRtCUttURlST. 



68^ 



TTi"!"' ifriiiiiOT'TrrT- iiiiiriiiTn i iniiiwi 



able disaftectiou in the native mind, which the author- 

 ities would do well to watch carefully. Not by shutting,' 

 up newspapers which report any facts, but by meeting 

 those facts where they are substantiated by properly 

 devised measures. 



Kevertiug to my original theme, it is not sufficient 

 for the Dutch to say that in most instances the lower 

 standard is sufficient for the natives, who are lazy and 

 indolent, and do no more than they are obliged to do 

 to obtain a subsistence. And it is to this level the 

 Dutch bend rather than to elevate the natives not 

 right up to the European standard, but at all events in 

 that direction. It is what is demanded in the latter half 

 of the nineteenth century from a nation which would 

 maintain its status, and Holland may possibly be called 

 on ere long to take considerable measures in Java to 

 maintain its position. — London and China Express. 



VEGETATION : NOTES OF A NATURALIST IN 



AUSTRALIA. 



Bt Dh. J. E. Tatlob, F. L. S., F. G. S, &c., 



Editor of " Science Gossip. " 



The most remarkable thing about the wild roses in 

 Australia is that they are acquiring the same trick 

 which the ancestors of the orange learned j'ears ago, 

 and transmitted to their descendants — that is to say, 

 I found them many a time bearing flowers and fruit 

 at the same time, and this was taking place in June 

 and July, corresponding to December aud January in 

 England. Evidently the more equable climate has 

 affected its habits in this respect. I observed also that 

 its foliage was not dropped — at least, not to any remark- 

 able degree. Is the wild rose making up its mind to 

 become an evergreen shrub, or rather, to have descend- 

 ants which shall be, like the orange tree ? The degree 

 to which plants and animals will alter their habits, 

 and become modified in their .structures, is only just 

 being taken up by naturalists. Nowhere can this 

 department of practical Darwinism be better studied 

 than in Australia. I say practical, because there is 

 a great deal, not only of knowledge, but possibly also 

 of commercial benefit, to be gained by attending to 

 these matters ; and I hope that the scientific societies 

 of your colonies will take i\o the subject. Let them 

 put on accurate record the exact degree to which the 

 imported animals and plants vary, as well as all the 

 conditions under which the tendency to variation occurs. 

 It strikes me that variation (due to ready adaptation) 

 will be found very frequently to take place quicker 

 than many geologists and naturalists have hitherto 

 imagined. They have hypothetically formulated mil- 

 lions of years as necessary ; but in most cases careful 

 tabulation of observed facts will reveal to us how 

 responsive many animal aud vegetable organisms are 

 to the conditions under which they leave. Look, for 

 instance, how quickly the European deciduous trees 

 imported to the Australia learned to adapt the time 

 when their leaves should fall to j'our Australian winter. 

 They made a muddle of it for a few years, and most 

 of their leaves fell off during your summer ; but this 

 was because of that acquired ancestral experience we 

 denominate instinct. Year by year this grew weaker 

 in comparison with the newly-acquired individual ex- 

 perience with the new conditioos of their leaves revealed 

 to them. And now Ihey are as well adapted to Aus- 

 tralian seasons as if they had always been Australian 

 trees, 



I<9t it not be supposed that I have anything to say 

 against the mere act of drawing upon the " Bank of 

 Time" for due explanations of natural phenomena. 

 Time by itself can do nothing at all — although people 

 speak of its " tooth '' growing and eating away ,rocks, 

 &c. It is the number, intensity, &c. , of the events 

 which take place in time which makes the latter of 

 value. 



The Australian trees transplanted to India, California, 

 and elsewhere have had to reverse the ancestral ex- 

 perience handed down to them from tint of their 

 not hern representatives in the Indian botanic gardens 

 all of their individual and infantine uncertainties in 

 respect of the changed seasons have beeu duly 

 {Chronicled, 



Sydneyand its suburbs are truly wonderful as regards 

 the ease with which all warmth-loving forms of vegeta- 

 tion are induced to grow there. The old notion con- 

 cerning the geographical distribution of plants seems 

 to have been based on pretty much the same kind of 

 principle as that of classes in English society — that all 

 men " should be content with that station of life in 

 which it had pleased Providence to place them ! " 

 It was imagmetl that the reason why certain animals 

 and plants were found in certain places aud not in 

 others was that the localities where we found them 

 were the best for them. This teleological conclusion 

 barred out any further -questioning. 



For almost every Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide 

 garden of any size (am'' ' deed, of all size) demonstrates 

 this. Each is a kind o!: "Noah's Ark," in which we 

 find gathered together (as if, also, it was a kind of re- 

 presentative " Little room in Jerusalem ") all the 

 " tribes, families, and tongues " of the vegetable king- 

 dom. 



"What is more to the point is— such plants are doing 

 better than they would in their original homes. 

 Every human colonist will recognise the importance 

 of this fact, but the arm-chair naturalist, who is as 

 much chocked when the wild roses out in Australia 

 behave after the Darwinian fashion as he would be if 

 he saw too much "white stocking" in the muddy 

 streets of Paris, is unable to appreciate the point. 



Thus, next to the oranges, lemons, and citrous (besides 

 varieties of each) which grow hereabouts as if it were 

 their natural home, we have loquats, bananas, peaches, 

 plums, and a host of other fruit native to every part 

 of the globe. They attain a larger size here than they 

 do in their native habitats — a plain proof that the old 

 teleological doctrine of their being found where it 

 was best for them to grow is not correct. The loquat 

 shrubs are especially numerous in all the gardens of 

 the Sydney suburbs, and their fruit is extensively 

 eaten — at which I was surprised, considering how 

 abundant is the choice. Grenadines also are grown, 

 and appear on every table dessert: but they were 

 too much like coarse green gooseberries for me to try 

 them more than once. 



Driving out from Manly along the capitally-made 

 and well-kept road which runs to Broken Bay, and 

 more or less skirts the coast the entire distance, one 

 sees much both to admire and study. Within a mile 

 or two we get into the forest— and such a forest ! 

 I had not seen anything ia all my Australian rambles 

 to compare with it for number and variety of plants. 

 The solemn monotony of the ubiquitous gumtrees has 

 had to give way to the healthy survivals of even more 

 i-emarkable types of the Australian flora. Oanksias 

 of several species, she-oaks or casuarivMs, abundance 

 of the native pine (fernelea), numerous species of un- 

 common gumtrees, native cherrytrees {exocarpus), and 

 a few solemn and stately and rare Australian palms 

 formed the arboreal vegetation. The ground was 

 occupied with a bush of myrtaceous plants {melaleuca 

 chiefly), and thickets of ti-tree. In places it was quite 

 ablaze with pink and scarl^t Epacrios, and the wild 

 indigo plant (hardeabergia) climbed and twisted its stems 

 over and within the wiry bush vegetation, and flung 

 its abounding spikes of brilliant purple flowers about 

 with botanical recklessness. Here and there the tall, 

 blackened stems of the grass-tree {Xauthorea) rose 

 from amid the bush to the heisht of ten or a dozen 

 feet, and their clusters of terminal foliage looked as 

 if they had earned for the tree a very appropriate name. 



In one of the many richlj-clad dells leading to Broken 

 Bay, I came across a sight which gladdened my eyes, 

 It was what I may call a forest Zainius. They grew 

 in numbers, and in places dccupied the entire ground, 

 in company with maiden hair and other ferns. I 

 had never seen these plants growing in a state of 

 nature before, and I examined them carefully. Some 

 of them were bearing fruit, and the oldest of thera 

 had the turnip-shaped and scarred trunks (not much un- 

 like pineapples). These remarkable plants may be regard- 

 ed as intermediate in their botanical relationship between 

 the ferns and the pines. I regarded them with un- 

 usual interest, for they are the southern survivors 

 of a once cosmopolitan group of plants, A« far b»cb 



