BY W. WOOLLS, PH.D., F.L.S. 189 



through the air, the hooked or rough fruits of others cause them 

 to be taken from place to place by animals. Amongst the Compo- 

 sites, which of late years have become a pest to graziers, the two 

 species of ffypochoeris are the most remarkable. These plants 

 establish themselves in the -bush, as well as in cultivated ground, 

 and render the pasture unpalatable for stock, though T have been 

 informed, that in Victoria they are eaten by sheep. Now the 

 pappus of these species is well adapted for scattering the seeds in 

 all directions, as it is feathery and becomes the sport of everv 

 wind. The same remark is applicable to plants of the thistle kind, 

 and this accounts for the great increase of such plants in all parts 

 of the colony where they are permitted to go to seed. Xanthium 

 spinosum affords an instance of distribution in another way. This 

 plant (the Bathurst Burr of the colonists) has not any pappus, but 

 the fruit or burrs are covered with hooked prickles which adhere 

 to the manes and tails of horses, and the wool of sheep, and thus 

 the seeds ai'e conveyed from country to country. It is said that 

 it was brought in the first instance to this colony in the manes of 

 some South American horses, but it may also have found its way 

 from the Cape of Good Hope in the wool of some imported sheep, 

 for Dr. Shaw (Journal Lin. Soc, Vol. 14, 1874) traces its intro- 

 duction into South Africa, and its enormously rapid distribution 

 there, to that source. These instances, amongst many which might 

 be given, are sufficient to account for the number of introduced 

 Composites and their increase in the colony. 



The consideration of this subject, in connection with the 

 progress of cultivation, is interesting as showing the changes 

 which are coming over the vegetation of N. S. Wales. It would 

 appear from the Vegetable Fossils found in our auriferous drifts 

 that the Flora of this colony and Victoria was very different 

 in ages past from what it is now, and that, in the pliocene period, 

 forests of trees which now exist only in fossilised fruits and wood, 

 extended to what forms at the present period the valley of the 

 Upper Macquai'ie. What relation the Flora of the past bears to 

 the Flora of the present, remains yet to be investigated ; but it 

 seems to be pretty well established that the genus " Spondylostrobus 



