SPECIMENS OF PLANTS COLLECTED AT KING 

 GEORGE'S SOUND BY THE REV. R. COLLIE, F.L.S. 



By The Rev. Dr. Woolls, F.L.S. 



The specimens collected by the Rev , R. Collie, though containing 

 nothing new, are nevertheless highly interesting. The Rev. 

 gentleman seems to have visited part of the same ground which 

 the eminent Robert Brown examined in the early portion of the 

 present century, when he was attached as naturalist to Flinders's 

 expedition, and when further he collected some of the same species 

 which attracted Mr. Collie's attention. King George's Sound, 

 therefore, has a history in the progress of botanical science, having 

 as it were acquired classic celebrity from the labours of Brown, 

 and from the appropriate names which he gave to many of its 

 plants. From the small collection of Mr. Collie, only a limited 

 idea can be formed of the peculiarity exhibited by our South- 

 western Flora ; but, so far as the collection goes, especially in the 

 orders Leguminosae, Myrtaceae, Proteacese, and Epacridese, it tends 

 to illustrate the fact, so strikingly enunciated by Sir J. D. Hooker 

 in his " Introductory Essay on the Flora of Tasmania," that the 

 proportion of species in S. W. Australia is much greater than in 

 the S.E., and that the striking differences in the genera and 

 species of the two quarters open for consideration questions of 

 deep significance in regard to the creation and distribution of 

 species. Though Hooker's work was published in 1859, — that is 

 about twenty years before the completion of the Flora Australiensis 

 by the united labours of Bentham and Mueller, his views are still 

 found to be correct, whilst the probability that Western Australia 

 was the centrum of Australian vegetation is still further confirmed 

 by the opinions of our eminent Geologist Mr. Wilkinson, and the 

 recent calculations of Baron Mueller in his Census of Australian 



