NEW PUBLICATIONS. 123 



which would then be almost as large as Erica, and play in Australia 

 the same part as the Heaths do in Southern Africa. It is impossible 

 to say, offhand, how far botanists will follow the author in this (may 

 we say ?) revolutionary change. Bentham, who may be said to have a 

 leaning towards large genera, and may be assumed to have examined 

 the subject with a friendly eye, has nevertheless I'ejected the change ; 

 though he admits (Fl. Austr.) that there are certain intermediate forms 

 which, in a measure, justify Dr. Von Mueller's proposition. 



We shall be glad to receive the continuation of this eminently useful 

 work, and wish the author would give ns a figure of the Australian 

 Beech {Fagus Moo7-ei), which would enable us to compare it with the 

 numerous fossil Fagi found in Europe, and which might prove still more 

 strikingly than the facts available till now, that the late Professor Unger 

 was correct in the conclusions which he drew from a comparison of the 

 Eocene flora of Europe and the present flora of New Holland. 



Report on the Vegetation of the Andaman Islands. By S. KuRZ. Ac- 

 companied by a Eeport on the Forests, and a Map. Calcutta : 

 1870. Folio, pp. 75. 



It is now 1000 years ago, about the year a.d. 800, that our old 

 friend Sindbad the Sailor — by no means that imaginary personage 

 which those acquainted merely with the popular version of his seven 

 voyages preserved in the ' Arabian Nights' Entertainments ' believe 

 him to have been — landed on some islands in the Indian seas inhabited 

 by pigmies. But the account he gave of his sufferings among them was 

 as little believed as that relating to the gigantic bird of Madagascar, 

 until in our own days several of these dwarfs had actually been cap- 

 tured alive, and three of the roc's eggs, if not the bird that laid them itself, 

 had been deposited in our museums. A visit to a group of islands about 

 which the curiosity of the Avhole world has been kept on a stretch for one 

 thousand years, is something to rejoice over ; and we cannot sufficiently 

 thank the Indian Government and Dr. T. Anderson, of Calcutta, for 

 having dispatched an intelligent botanist to Sindbad's Islands of the 

 Pigmies, or, as we now call tiicm, the Andaman group. That the ex- 

 plorer should happen to be one of our esteemed contributors, and that 

 liis report should have been placed so promptly into the hands of the 

 public, is an additional source of gratification. Previous to Mr. Kurz's 



