president's address. 15 



Nowadays, introduced hive-bees are usually the most con- 

 spicuous visitors, both to garden-plants, and, in localities not 

 too remote from settlement, also to native plants, including 

 Eucalypts, Banksias, and Grevilleas Bee-keepers are glad to 

 have Eucalypt forest in proximity to their apiaries. In some 

 cases, doubtless, the hive-bees are instrumental in efiecting 

 pollination. But in others, they merely deprive the flower- 

 frequenting birds of their birthright, without accomplishing 

 anything for the benefit of the plants. 



The only observation on the pollination of Acacia that I have 

 been able to discover, is a paper on A. cdastri/olia (6), by Mr. O, 

 Sargent. There is a reference in Hermann Miiller to an Acacia 

 in which the central flower of the head is converted into a great 

 nectary; and some observations on the relation between extra- 

 floral nectaries and the flowering period of several of our Acacias, 

 are recorded in tl>e Australian Naturalist(7). 



The earliest references I can trace to the pollination of Aus- 

 tralian flowers are those of Henschel, 1820(8), Hildebrand, 

 1867-70(9), and Delpino, 1868-73(10). They appear to have 

 contained references to the fertilisation of the Proteacese and 

 Goodeniacea^; but as I cannot consult these, I am unable to 

 speak definitely about them. It is tolerably certain, however, 

 that they were merely observations on the mechanisms of the 

 flowers as seen in cultivated plants. In R. Brown's (not the R. 

 Brown) Manual of Botany (11), there is a very good account of 

 indusiate stigmas in theGoodeniacese. He says, "This arrange- 

 ment of the stigma .... favours fecundation. The five anthers 

 are in the form of an arch under which lies the indusiate stigma. 

 Accordingly, when the anthers dehisce introrsely, the pollen 

 falls directly into the cup-shaped indusium, and there performs 

 its functions towards fecundation." Brown falls into the trap, 

 as several of us did, of supposing that, when the pollen was in 

 the cup, the process was at an end. 



In 1867, Bentham read a paper before the Linnean Society on 

 the Stigmatic Apparatus in Goodenoviese, in which he says, " It 

 is in order to call to the subject the attention of any observers 

 who may have any species in cultivation, and still more of those 



