THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 25 



Hotham are about 8 miles apart, but are almost N. and S. from 

 one another. The only bearing which he gives which seems to 

 agree with our present map is Mt. Aberdeen (the Horn) W. 5° S. 

 from his Latrobe (Bogong). 



Mr. Stirling, in an accompanying note, says that he has no 

 doubt in his own mind but that Dr. Mueller ascended and named 

 Feathertop as Hotham, and Bogong as Latrobe ; and, further, 

 that during the visit of the Australasian Association to Mount 

 Hotham, in 1891, the late Baron pointed out all the points he had 

 ascended in 1855. A report of this visit will be found in 

 " Proceedings Geographical Society of Australasia (Victorian 

 Branch)," vol. viii., part i, p. 43, with a map in part 2. 



As the Baron remarks in his letter, priority of naming in 

 geographical matters should be as much respected as in biological 

 matters, and though I do not advocate any attempt to restore the 

 name of Hotham to its original mountain, still I should like to 

 say that, after carefully reading the Omeo despatch, and compar- 

 ing it with maps of the district, notably that in Dr. Lendenfeld's 

 report of a visit to Mount Bogong in " Reports of Mining 

 Registrars of Victoria," March, 1886, I have come to the con- 

 clusion that Baron von Mueller, in his letter of i8th October, 

 18S4, to Mr. Stirling, suffered from a lapse of memory, and that 

 instead of ascending Feathertop and naming it Hotham, lie really 

 ascended our Bogong, and bestowed that name (Hotham) 

 upon it, while his Latrobe is either Mt. Wills, nearly 6,000 ft. 

 high, about 10 miles S.E., or Mt. Nelson, both peaks of the 

 Bogong Range. I must admit that this conclusion does not 

 perfectly fit in with his bearings as printed, but seeing that these 

 mountains were being located for the first time, and that he was 

 viewing a landscape which he had not seen before, I am not 

 surprised at the wrong peaks being named for the bearings given ; 

 and when we recall the words of his report already quoted, " I 

 traversed a grassy table-land in a N.E. direction, along the 

 Cobungra downwards," these cannot possibly refer to the 

 " Razor-back," the only possible approach to Feathertop from 

 where he crossed the Alps from Gippsland. 



Risking the remark that my paper is becoming too geographical, 

 I should like to be allowed to give a few facts in tlie evolution of 

 the map of Victoria, with which my searches at the Lands 

 Department and the Public Library have made me conversant. 



The first map of Victoria printed after Dr. Mueller's visit to 

 the Alps in 1855, which I have come across, is contained in 

 Proeschel's " Atlas of Australasia," published in London in 1863. 

 As this was engraved by Brown and Slight, Emerald Hill, Mel- 

 bourne, it was probably drawn a year or two earlier. It is on a 

 scale of about 25 miles to i inch, and gives most of the names 

 mentioned by Dr. Mueller in his reports, and the mformation 



