president's address. 765 



element in which is the generative system of flowers, in many 

 respects so strikingly like that of animals. 



Botanists, especially beginners, who have been accustomed to 

 use "Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants," with its astounding- 

 mass of condensed information, can testify to the great assistance 

 which it affords them at a very small sacrifice of time. 



The despised aborigines of Australia, in addition to being 

 astronomers, were undoubtedly the first Australian botanists, for. 

 although they had no distinctive names for the various parts of 

 flowers, and could not count the stamens or pistils on which 

 Linmeus founded his system, yet they had a distinctive and pro- 

 bably descriptive name for every conspicuous plant which grew 

 in their respective territories, and, as I understand, for many 

 classes of plants also, such, for instance, as ferns, gum trees, and 

 acacias. Banks, in his Journal, states that they had some 

 knowledge of plants, as he could plainly perceive by their having 

 names for them. 



They were necessarily driven, by an inhospitable and uncertain 

 climate, to turn to account, as a means of subsistence, eveiy 

 thing which could possibly help them to sustain life ; to enable 

 them to do this, they were compelled to take precautions against 

 injury from the use of some plants which, through their 

 poisonous properties, would otherwise have been seriously in- 

 jurious if not fatal to them. 



They knew also the medicinal and curative properties of plants, 

 and by their aid often effected marvellous cures of diseases and 

 wounds. 



In illustration of what I have said of the classification of 

 plants by the aborigines, I may state that a very intelligent half- 

 caste native of Shoalhaven, some time since informed me that 

 his people were accustomed to use a decoction made from a 

 certain plant as a cure for diarrhoea, and that there were three 

 different kinds of this plant. On his bringing me specimens, they 

 turned out to be Rubus mollucanus, R. parvifolius, and R. 

 roscvf'olius. 



