146 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



Gippsland country, as had been advi.sed by Sir James Hector 

 two years since, they would be able to determine with more 

 accuracy whether those outcrops were likely to continue 

 underground for any distance. A geological surveyor would 

 be able to determine by the elevation whether two outcrops, 

 say a mile distant from each other, belonged to a continuous 

 bed, running perhaps beneath a neighbouring hill ; whereas 

 at present one person found one outcrop and another person 

 another, and both reported their discoveries as totally 

 different beds. An agitation by the Society would, he 

 thought, have a great deal of weight with the Government, 

 in inducing it to consider the propriety of re-establishing a 

 survey of this country on a proper basis. Mr. Selwyn had 

 done remarkably good work, and he supposed no better 

 resume had been written than that which appeared in the 

 Exhibition Essays in 1886. Since then nothing had been 

 done by the Government, and the whole thing had come to 

 a sudden stop. If they were to go into the Public Library^ 

 and look at the work which had been done by Mr. Selwyn 

 in Canada, they would be able to form some idea of what he 

 might have done had he continued his labours in Victoria. 



The President said that the matter should be discussed 

 at the next meeting of the Council, and as there seemed to 

 be a movement in the same direction elsewhere, it was to be 

 hoped that ere long the surveying of the Colony would be 

 proceeded with, if not on quite such liberal lines as those 

 laid down by Mr, Selwyn, at any rate on lines very much 

 extended in comparison with those that had existed during 

 the last eight or ten years. 



Mr. George G. McCrae then read a paper on the Coco-de- 

 Mer, specimens of which were exhibited in the room. A 

 copy of the Botanical Magazine, lent by Baron von Mueller, 

 containing an account of the tree, was also handed round 

 among the members. At the conclusion of the paper, 



Mr. McCrae, in reply to the President, said that he had 

 endeavoured to introduce the plant into Queensland by 

 sending a nut to the curator of the garden at Bo wen, but 

 as he had heard nothing as to the result of the experiment, 

 he had concluded that the seed had perished en route. He 

 had tried another in a hot-house in Victoria, but this had 

 proved to be a failure. However, he had been promised 

 two more with the seeds well-protected, and expected to 



