214 PLANTS XEW TO SOUTH QI'EENSLAND, 



recorded previously among ours, but representatives of genera 

 with no member of their family known to exist here, and even of 

 an order, may be claimed to enrich our already wealthy Flora. 



I have abstained from enlisting in the roll of our plants some 

 new species brought within the last twelve months to the light 

 of science by our veteran Botanist Baron Mueller, and which 

 have been discovered in this locality. Likewise many varieties 

 into which more or less elastic species are apt to sport have no 

 place in this supplementary revision. Although the study of the 

 variations to which many plants of a wide geographical range 

 are subject, in connection with that of the causes which influence 

 these changes within specific limits, such as the nature of soil, 

 from which they draw nutriment, the heat and moisture of the 

 atmosphere in which they grow, the light, insects, neighbouring 

 plants and many more agencies, is of the highest interest for the 

 solution of a more general problem, still the material for it is as 

 yet so scanty as to scarcel}" deserve mention. 



In the prefatory remarks to my former paper Australian 

 Cryptogamology was numbered among those subjects of botanic 

 science for which little or nothing had been done. This statement 

 might engender the wrong impression that no attention whatso- 

 ever was paid to Cryptogamic Botan}'. The supplements that 

 Baron Mueller has added to the eleventh volume of his Fragment a 

 show what an immense stride has been made in the knowledge 

 of Australian Cryptogamic plants. Without reckoning the 

 Ferns, Lycopodiads, the few Marsileace«), the number of known 

 cryptogamic forms rises to over three thousand, one-third of 

 which belong to the Fungal class, another to the Algal, and the 

 last to Characero, Musci, Jungermannia3 and Lichens. It is 

 mainly due to the labour of the learned Baron to have brought 

 together, and off ered for identification and description to eminent 

 European specialists so many species. The words of my assertion 

 may be taken to mean that although much has been done for 

 the Cryptogamic Botany of Australia, still compared with 



