THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 141 



old marsh and backwater, now turned into a lovely lake studded 

 with islets, are known and visited by thousands, but the magnifi- 

 cent collections of fruit and seeds contained in the Museum 

 of Economic Botany are comparatively unknown. Too much 

 praise cannot be accorded to Mr. W. R. Guilfoyle, the director 

 of the gardens for over twenty years, for the useful and scientific 

 manner in which the collection is exhibited. A student can 

 pass from case to case, examining and comparing the great 

 variety in the forms of fruits. This is an invaluable help to 

 students, as in the same order we may find the most opposite 

 kinds — dry fruits, which open and allow the seed to fall and be 

 distributed by animals or wind ; succulent fruits, which, by 

 tempting the hungry birds, induce them to swallow them, and 

 thus spread the seeds far and wide ; again, other fruits which are 

 dry but do not open. These are constructed either with special 

 organs, such as hooks or arrow-like points, or have a sticky juice ; 

 these fasten the fruits to the unwary traveller, whether man or 

 beast, and they are thus carried for many miles from the parent 

 plant before they fall. In this collection may also be studied an 

 immense variety of timbers, fibre plants and their products, food 

 plants and products, and numerous specimens of the seeds or 

 fruits or dried flowers or leaves of plants of great commercial 

 value, which produce oils, medicines, fodders, condiments, and 

 tannin substances, &c. 



Another most important facility for botanical study — namely, the 

 System Pavilion — has also been instituted by Mr. Guilfoyle. Here 

 may be seen some 4,000 potted plants scientifically arranged 

 according to the natural system of the later botanists. This splen- 

 did collection shows representatives of no less than 152 orders 

 Taking four of the more important orders, we find the Legu- 

 minosffi represented by 253 distinct species, the Rosaceae by 140, 

 the Myrtaceae by 86, and the Euphorbiaceae by 46, and so 

 through all the orders. Too much stress cannot be laid upon 

 the importance of this pavilion, for the plants are looking well 

 and healthy in spite of the weather, and students during the 

 flowering season (which virtually is all the year round, some of 

 the plants being always in flower) can pass from order to order, 

 noting the special characters that distinguishes one genus or 

 species from another. Nothing can better illustrate the salubrity 

 of our (rather uncertain) climate than this plant-house. We find 

 plants indigenous to countries from the cold temperate to those 

 situated in almost tropical regions growing luxuriantly side by 

 side, and the student is thus enaJjled to work out the life-history 

 of plants of various regions without stirring from the colony. 



For the information of students I may say that these depart- 

 ments of the gardens are not open daily, but on Tuesdays and 

 Fridays only, from 2 to 4 p.m., though persons specially desiring 



