Ixxvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE 
observations, aided by the vast materials collected at an enormous 
cost during the last half-century, and now deposited at Kew or in our 
own Museum. In Australia, Dr. Ferdinand Miiller, the eminent Go- 
vernment Botanist of Victoria, has completed the first volume, com- 
prising Thalamiflore, of an elaborate account, in quarto, of the rich 
flora of that colony, illustrated by a considerable number of litho- 
graphic plates, which do credit to colonial art. This Flora is par- 
ticularly valuable in showing the views in regard to the consolida- 
tion of supposed species entertained by a scientific botanist, working 
in a great measure upon living specimens. Of Dr. Harvey’s beautifully 
illustrated Phycologia Australica, the fourth volume is now nearly 
completed. 
The utility of Colonial Floras has been recognized by other Go- 
vernments as wellas our own. The practical Dutch have especially 
applied themselves to obtaining a correct knowledge of the vegetable 
productions of their dependencies. The numerous partial works of 
Blume, Korthals, Hasskarl, Junghuhn, and others, some of them 
splendidly illustrated, and, consequently, too expensive for ordinary 
use, have been condensed into a complete Flora van Nederlandsch 
Indie by Professor Miquel, who, in the course of six years, has given 
us the whole of Pheenogamia, in four volumes, with a supplementary 
volume for Sumatra. We have not here, therefore, to bewail that 
tardiness which leaves so many important works unfinished at the 
death of their authors, or, if complete, with the first volumes an- 
tiquated before the last make their appearance ; on the contrary, we 
could have wished that the author had given himself a little more 
time to work out the details with that accuracy of research which 
we should have expected from a botanist of his well-proved ability. 
To the same class of Natural Histories of distant dependencies 
may be referred the results of the Russian expeditions to explore 
their newly acquired’ territories on the Amoor. Dr. Leopold v. 
Schrenck’s Reisen und Forschungen im Amur Lande is one of the 
most important contributions to our knowledge of the fauna of 
Northern Asia, and of the geographical distribution of animals, and 
more especially of the Mammalia; whilst M. Maximovitch’s Pri- 
mitie Flore Amurensis is an admirable account of the botany of the 
district as far as hitherto known, and ofits physical geography in rela- 
tion to vegetation. From the former, amongst the numerous interest- 
ing observations it contains, we learn the startling fact of the existence 
of the Tiger as a permanent and ordinary resident, even in winter, 
on the Amoor, or up to about the 50th degree of N. latitude, where, 
as shown by Maximovitch, the river is frozen over for at least six 
