PKEFACE. 15* 



Hooker's E:ssay, some otliers may he found quoted in tlio present work 

 in connection ^vith species they have collected. To supply any omis- 

 sious I may have inadvertently made, and in the hope of doing full jus- 

 tice to all •who may have directly or indirectly contributed to the inves- 

 tigation of the Australian Flora, it is my purpose, with the last volume 

 to give a general alphabetical list, with a sketch of their labours, of all 

 those whose collections are deposited in the public or private herbaria 

 to which 1 have access. 



With regard to the form and language adopted in the present work, 

 they are those which, after much consideration, were adopted and sanc- 

 tioned by Sir W. J. Hooker for colonial Floras in general, and exempli- 

 fied m the * Flora Hongkongensis/ I may theref)re here repeat what 

 I then stated, that it has been my endeavour to follow out the principles 

 laid down in the " Outlines of Botany '' prefixed to each of these Floras, 

 so as to facilitate as much as possible the finding out the name of any 

 plant gathered in the territory, by the comparison of specimens with 

 the descriptions given. For this purpose, although I cannot yet give 

 an analytical key to the Orders, until at least the Polypetalcs shall have 

 been gone through, the genera of each Order, and the species of each 

 genus, arc universally preceded by analytical tables, in which their more 

 prominent characters are contrasted. These tables may be considered 

 as another form for the short diagnoses of Linnrcus and his immediate 

 followers, or for the italicized portions of many modern diagnoses, and 

 can refer only to the differentiation of known species. It is the rain 

 attempt to introduce characters which might absolutely distinguish a 

 species from all others to be hereafter discovered, — to contrast the 

 known with the unknown,— that has occasioned those long and tedious 

 diagnoses, which render many modern descriptive works almost nn- 

 i^anageable. A long description in the ablative absolute, supposed to 

 contain the essential characters only, and another in the nominative with 

 the accessory ones, often fail in their purpose, for some of the most 

 striking features, such as stature, dimensions, colour, etc., because they 

 are less absolute than the others, arc conventionally considered as access 

 sory; and the descriptions containing them are usually first glanced 

 over by the botanist seeking to name a plant, before he wades through 

 the confused mass of ablatives in which he is to find the important 

 characters/ In my descriptions, therefore, which I have been obliged 

 to shorten as much as consistent with their practical use, 1 have en- 

 deavoured to select the characters most important to observe for their 

 identification. Many of these descriptions are, I am aware, as yet very 



