president's address. 1219 



decay of the Australian Forests, ascribing the destruction of the 

 Eucalyptus mainly to the multiplication of the Phalangers 

 (Opossums), but also to the ravages of ' a small copper-coloured 

 beetle ' (sic) ; also, by the same author, on the Stone Implements 

 of the Aborigines of Australia aDd other countries, in which he 

 shows that there is little or no evidence for a geologic antiquity 

 for the Australian blacks in Australia. Dr. Brandis, F.R.S., 

 communicates a note upon Bamboos from N. W. Himalaya, 

 A rundinaria Jalcata, and A. spathijlora, which are also recom- 

 mended by Baron von Mueller for cultivation in 1ST. S. W. Dr. 

 Morris, F.R.M.S., recommends various media for mounting 

 Diatoms, with an account of his experiments upon them. A short 

 note on the characters of the Adelong Reefs, by S. Herbert Cox, 

 F.C.S., F.G.S., concludes the general papers. But in the proceedings 

 of the Medical Section, Dr. Manning offers ' a Contribution to 

 the Study of Heredity,' in which he enters into a consideration of 

 certain conditions which tend to produce idiocy or imbecility. It 

 was in the Hospital for the Insane at Newcastle that his enquiries 

 commenced, with a view to ascertain how far these evils were the 

 result of hereditary mischief ; but was checked in his course by 

 the shocking, but not really strange, discovery that more than 

 one-third of the patients had no known friends or relatives. 

 These children and victims of vice had been picked up in the streets 

 where they had been cast away like human refuse, which indeed, 

 poor creatures, their parents had made them ; and so the 

 investigation of Heredity was impossible in their case. The author, 

 therefore, directed himself to the examination of cases in which 

 two or more of a family were afflicted with mental weakness, and 

 so to the particular investigation of the history of 21 families with 

 a total of 82 children, 50 of which were thus affected. The data 

 and arguments are of two pathological a character for this 

 occasion. 



The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania for the year 

 1885, contain besides a large number of interesting and important 

 notes the following papers, viz. : — 



