16* PREFACE. 



imperfect, and some may be in some respect erroneous, especially with 

 regard to stature, colour, and dimensions, owing to the insufBciency of 

 Bpeclmcns and the want of reliable memoranda by those who have seen 

 the plants in a living state. • Travellers, therefore, making Use of this 

 work in the country, will have to guard against attaching much im- 

 portance to discrepancies in characters which dried specimens cannot 

 show, when the descriptions apply well to the plant they are examining 

 as to form and structure. With regard to dimensions, especially, it 

 must be borne in mind that those here given are the average limits be- 

 tween which the organs vary in their full-grown normal state. Starva- 

 tion, inordinate luxuriance, the imperfect development of the first- or 

 last-formed organs of each kind, and other similar circumstances, may 

 reduce or extend the dimensions beyond the limits assigned, but the 

 general aspect of the specimens, if tolerably good, will generally indi- 

 cate whether the organs are or not in any such abnormal conditions. 



With regard to the synonymy, I have endeavoured to give a com- 

 plete reference to all publislied names of endemic Australian plants, as 

 well as to all names which have been specially given with reference to 

 Australian specimens. But in the case of well-known extra- Australian 

 species extending into our Flora, I have thought it unnecessary to re- 

 peat the \\hole of the synonyms, already given in the general works I 

 have quoted, adding only such new ones as my researches for the iden- 

 tification of Australian species have enabled me to verify. 



In order to facilitate the use of this work as a separate Flora of 

 each of the colonial territories whose Governments have supported 

 it by separate grants, I have thought it right to indicate by a pro- 

 . minent typographical arrangement the particular colonies in which each 

 species is to be found. For this purpose I have considered Queensland 

 as extending (as indicated in our most recent maps) to Cape York, and 

 have desiguated under the general name of North Australia the whole 

 of the unsettled territory to the westward within the tropics. Sharks 

 Bay and its neighbourhood are considered as belonging to West Austra- 

 lia; and I have taken as the northern limits of South Australia, the 2Gth 

 parallel S. latitude, as T find it marked in our maps. 



In giving the various stations at wliich each species has been found, 

 it has been my plan to enumerate all those I find in E. Brown's her- 

 barium, all Cunningham's except theTasmauian ones, and generally all 

 others that I find authentically recorded on labels accompanyin*^ the 

 specimens, excepting where many collectors have gathered the same 

 ^lant at such well-known localities as Port Jackson, King Greorge's 



