776 president's address. 



In 1842, Charles Stuart began collecting in Tasmania and New 

 South Wales, and continued so doing for many years, paying 

 special attention to New England. 



In 1344, the necessary funds were raised, by private sub- 

 scription, to enable Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt to conduct an over- 

 land expedition from Moreton Bay to Port Essington. After the 

 lapse of two years and two months, when everyone had given up 

 all hope of seeing the Doctor again, he and his party managed to 

 reach P©rt Essington in an almost starving condition, after their 

 terrible journey of 3,000 miles. Having a considerable know- 

 ledge of botany, Leichhardt's narrative is by far the fullest 

 public detailed account of the tropical vegetation of the interior of 

 Australia which we possess. 



In 1846, he started on a bolder expedition, from Moreton Bay 

 to Swan River, with a party, of which Mr. John F. Mann is the 

 sole survivor, but the weather and circumstances seem to have 

 been against him, and the party returned, a failure. 



However, nothing daunted, he made a second attempt in 

 1S46, and perished miserably with all his party, whose loss is one 

 of the mysteries of the interior, which probably will never be 

 solved. He was evidently thoroughly deficient in the faculty of 

 organization, and too reliant on the luck which had carried him 

 successfully through former troubles, and was eminently unsuited 

 for the position of either organizer or leader of such an expedi- 

 tion, although he was full of zeal and determination. 



In 1844, Captain Charles Sturt conducted an unprecedentedly 

 bold expedition to the very centre of Australia, and substituted 

 an interior desert for Oxley's inland sea, but, 15 years afterwards, 

 J. McDouall Stuart also passed through the centre of the 

 continent, and in turn dispelled Sturt's notion of a great central 

 desert. A considerable collection of plants was made by Sturt, 

 amounting to about 100 species, some of which were described by 

 Brown in an Appendix to Sturt's narrative of the expedition. 

 Two of the handsomest Australian flowers, Sturt's Desert Pea 

 (CUant/ms Dampieri) and Sturt's Desert Rose (Gossypium Sturti) 



