THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 93 



together with dates of appearance. Such a work would be of 

 great value to Lepidopterists, and might well be undertaken by 

 our Club. 



DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW AUSTRALIAN PLANTS, WITH 

 OCCASIONAL OTHER ANNOTATIONS ; 



By Baron von Mueller, K.C.M.G., M. & Ph.D., LL.D., ER.S. 



(Continued.) 

 Pterostylis Mackibbini. 



Leaves all comparatively large, several crowded near the root, 

 or when the stem much heightens all scattered, but the middle 

 leaves the largest, from ovate to lanceolar ; flower of great size, 

 singly terminal, partly chocolate-coloured, slightly puberulous, 

 supported by a large leaf-like bract ; upper calyx-lobe and lateral 

 petals upwards arched, bluntish ; lower calyx-lobes cuneate- 

 connate below the middle, upwards semilanceolar-subulate, 

 neither divergent nor with any long thread-like termination, the 

 sinus between them narrow and very acute ; labellum dark- 

 coloured, glabrous, narrow-elliptical, along the median line up- 

 wards folded, its appendage conspicuous fringy-penicillate ; ovu- 

 lary furrowed. 



Near St. Vincent-Gulf; F. v. M. (1848). Cardinia-Creek ; 

 Ch. French. Southern Tasmania ; Gulliver. On King's Island 

 and Swan-Island; J. M'Kibbin Esq. Near Brighton-Bluff; 

 Thos. S. Hart, Esq., M.A. 



Flowers here in September. All collectors found the dwarf 

 form of this species, in which then the leaves are sessile or short- 

 stalked and almost crowded into a rosette, the flower hardly 

 reaching beyond these radical leaves, and being almost sessile 

 among them, the bract expanding into a large floral leaf. Some 

 of Mr. M'Kibbin's specimens from King's Island are nearly a foot 

 high, have leaves 3^ inches long, on very conspicuous petioles, 

 whereas in some smaller specimens none of the leaves measure 

 over \Yz inches in length. This species differs chiefly from P. 

 curta in the stem, if developed, bearing very expansive leaves, and 

 therefore of far less difference in comparison to the radical leaves, 

 in the larger floral bract, in the more incurved upper calyx-lobe 

 and lateral petals, and in the far less wide sinus separating the 

 lower calyx-lobes. 



Our new plant is distinguished from P. cucullata in flowering 

 under equal circumstances some weeks earlier, in frequently 

 dwarf habit, again in the more curved upper portion of the flower, 

 reminding rather of P. nutans, and in the blunt upwards less 



