BY J. J. FLETCHER AND C. T. MUSSON. 201 



The late Professor R. Tate, in a paper entitled "A Review of 

 the Characters available for the Classification of the Eucalypts,' * 

 etc., under the section " Habit," expressed some vie"\vs. which 

 should have provided a new starting-point for considering the 

 make up of the Mallees. Unfortunately, they were so severely 

 condensed as to be cryptic, and quite failed to influence his 

 successors. Tate says — 



" The Eucalypti comprise two habits of growth, viz., trees and 

 shrubby trees, to which I «pply the vernacular names of Gums 

 and Mallees. I do not know if I am correct in so doing, as I 

 have failed to find any definitions of these well-l<nown terms." 

 " I have constantly observed in seedlings and growths of one or 

 two years of such gums, as E. vostrata, leucoxyloti^ virwinalis, a 

 large inflation of the base of the stem, either at the surface or 

 just below the surface of the soil. In the species named, this is 

 eventually outgrown; but. in the mallees, it f ersists and increases 

 in size proportionately with the development of the branches 

 which are emitted from it — in the mallee, this rudely globose 

 bole is partially subterranean." 



It is the third and fourth sentences that are important. These 

 embody Tate's version of the problem we are interested in, com- 

 pressed to an irreducible minimum. The chief diflficulty arises 

 from the fact that no attempt is made to explain the nature or 

 the significance of the basal inflations. A non-committal name 

 is given to them, but they remain of problematical import. Nor 

 is any reason given for their being transient in the seedlings of 

 Non-Mallees, and persistent in the Mallees. Nevertheless, he 

 recognised the dift'erence. Apparently his seedlings were not 

 young enough to show the axillary stem-nodules before they had 

 fused in pairs, and the fused pairs had Goncresced; and they 

 were not old enough to show that basal inflations were able to 

 incorporate roots. Jt was. presumably, from necessity, and not 

 from choice, that he confined his observations to seedlings of 

 "one or two years." If he had mentioned this, and supple- 

 mented it by pointing out the importance of studying seedlings 

 in trying to understand such complicated structures as the adult 



* Report Aust. Assoc. Adv. Sci., vii., p.544 (1898). 



