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XX. — Some Account of the Marine Botany of the Colony of Western Australia. 

 By W. H. Harvet, M. D., M. E. I. A., Keeper of the Herbarium of the Uni- 

 versity of Dublin, and Professor of Botany to the Royal Duhlin Society, ^x. 



Read December 11, 1854. 



1 HE laud vegetation of Western Australia is now tolerably well known, 

 chiefly through the labours of Mr. James Deummond and of Dr. L. Preiss, who 

 have separately explored almost all the settled districts ; and the former has 

 also pushed his researches f;xr to the northward and eastward, beyond the range 

 of any colonist's settlement. Lesser collections of land plants have been made 

 by Baron Hugel, Captain Mangles, the late Mrs. Mollot, Mr. J. S. Roe, and 

 other amateurs. 



The vegetation of the seaboard of the colony is much less known. Our 

 earliest acquaintance with West Australian Algce is derived from small but in- 

 teresting collections, made by some of the early French exploring expeditions ; 

 and by Dr. Robert Brown, who accompanied Flinders. Many of the less com- 

 mon species of these collections are only known to botanists by description or 

 figures. By far the largest series of Algte brought from this coast is that pro- 

 cured during four years' exploration of the colony by Mr. L. Preiss, to whom 

 great credit is due for having collected 141 species, as, from the nature of his 

 engagements, but little time could be devoted to this branch of botany. We 

 owe to Dr. Sonder, of Hamburgh, a veryable analysis and description of Preiss's 

 Algse ; and tlie Dublin University Herbarium is indebted to the liberality of 

 Senator Binder, of the same free city, for a tolerably perfect set of these Alga. 

 I have thus had the great advantage of examining authentic specimens of most 

 of the new genera and species discovered by Preiss, and described by Sondeu. 

 A parcel containing between sixty and seventy species of Western Australian 



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