Report of the Botanist. 899 



REPORT OF THE BOTANIST AND CURATOR OF THE 

 NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



/. G. Luehmann, F.L.S. 



The work iu the National Herbarium during the past year has 

 been principally of a routine character. The arrangement of the 

 non-Australian plants has steadily progressed according to Bentham 

 and Hooker's Genera Planiarum, and will be finished in a couple of 

 months up to the end of the Phanerogams. 



A complete list is made and also an alphabetical index. The 

 shelves are carefully numbered, so that there is no difficulty in finding 

 any desired plant. The species I have been compelled to sort 

 alphabetically, as being most convenient under present circumstances. 

 The whole of the late Dr. Sender's collection, purchased years ago 

 by the Government, has been incorporated iu the original herbarium 

 and put into the same paper, and so have also the many thousands of 

 plants received during the last 35 years, but not readily available 

 before for comparison. We have now, I believe, the finest collection 

 of plants south of the equator, for future reference by any botanist. 



I may mention that I found in Sonder's collection specimens 

 gathered more than 200 years ago in a good state of preservation ; 

 they were desci-ibed by Mr. Petiver ni the Philosophical Transactions 

 of the Royal Society at the beginning of the 18th century. They are 

 partly from India and partly from North America. 



Regai-ding the Australian collection, which is of course the finest 

 in the world, there are still many thousands of unnamed specimens, 

 but they are nearly all placed into their respective orders and genera. 

 They do not offer much new material, as the late Baron Von Mueller 

 had such a wide and profound knowledge of our native vegetation 

 that he would generally see at a glance whether a plant was new to 

 science or required investigation, though of course he could not with 

 certainty name all the collections he got and they were simply sent to 

 the herbarium without names, as supplements. The Australian collec- 

 tions are arranged according to Baron Von Mueller's Census of 

 Australian Plants, similarly to those from outside the Commonwealth, 

 but in this case the species are sorted systematically, at least the great 

 majority. The classifying of the immense number of unnamed 

 specimens will occupy much time yet but will have to be done, though 

 the results may be small. There are very few duplicates left, and 

 thus I have not been able to do much in the way of interchange, for 

 our plants near Melbourne have been sent away so frequently that 

 they are of no value to any large botanical establishment, and speci- 

 mens from the north and the interior of Australia are expensive. 



In order to guard the collections against the ravages of insects 

 they are placed in large iron boxes and then subjected to the vapours 



