president's address. 751 



This work does not prevent the publication of occasional papers 

 on Queensland and New Guinea plants (sometimes describing new 

 species) in the columns of the Queendaiid Agricyltural Journal, 

 and those who know the genial old veteran wish him still many 

 years of useful service in making better known the marvellous 

 botanical wealth of the northern State. 



Mr. J. G. Luehmann, Curator of the National Herbarium of 

 Victoria, is hard at work arranging the supplementary collections 

 in that fine herbarium — solid, useful work that leaves him but 

 little time for original research. 



The Hobart Meeting of the Australasian Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, held in January last, was not as 

 botanical as usual, and were it not for Members of our Society 

 there would have been no botanical contributions at all. There 

 was a good gathering of Australian botanists who returned laden 

 with specimens from Tasmania. 



In our own Proceedings Mr. R. H. Cambage has continued his 

 useful " Notes on the Botany of the Interior of New South Wales"; 

 Mr. Watts has some records of Richmond River Hepatics; and 

 Mr. D. McAlpine, of Melbourne, has a paper on the " Shot-hole 

 Fungi of Stone-fruit." The Macleay Bacteriologist (Mr. R. Greig 

 Smith) has contributed papers upon "The nature of the Bacteroids 

 of the Leguminous Nodule and the Culture of- Rhizohium legu- 

 rifiinosarum,'^ upon Vibrio denitrificans, and upon " Bacteria and 

 the Disintegration of Cement." In the last paper it is shown 

 that the decay occurring in the cement work of water canals and 

 reservoirs cannot be traced, as has been suggested, to the action 

 of certain bacteria, but to the chemical and physical action of 

 the water upon inferior cement. In " The Gum Fermentation of 

 Sugar-cane Juice " he described the isolation of Bacillus levani- 

 foi'mans, n.sp., which, in the manufacture and refining of cane 

 sugar, causes a direct loss by the formation of gum, and an 

 indirect loss by the gum retarding the crystallisation. The loss 

 does not stop there, for the bacillus inverts the sugar in the 

 juice, and also continues the degradation in the crystals after 

 manufacture during storage and transit, as has been shown in 



