RECORDS OF AUSTRALIAN BOTANISTS. 233 



branches of zoology and botany. He was evidently a man of very 

 broad reading, and it is a pity he published nothing in regard to 

 the Australian flora. I give two specimens from his copious 

 manuscripts, showing that he was not a mere collector. 



In all my wide wanderings in Australia I discovered but a single plant of 

 Emblingia calceoliflora, a form hitherto found by none but myself. As it 

 grows on the sandy shores of Western Australia, different portions of which 

 have been examined by various naturalists, beginning with Dampicr, who- 

 made the first botanical collection in New Holland, and including La Bil- 

 lardiere, Rob. Brown, Gaudichaud, Hugel, A. Cunningham, Preiss, J. Drum- 

 mond, P. Walcot, and many other collectors, and as it co%ers many square 

 yards with its long prostrate branches, and therefore is a plant not liable 

 to be overlooked, the probability is that the individual found by me was the 

 only existing member of its species, and, as far as is yet known, of its genus 

 also, while from the circumstance that it was growing on a spot over which 

 cattle were continually grazing, it is to be feared that that solitary individual 

 has been destroyed. Now, are we to consider such an individual as the first 

 or the last of its species ? As a plant nearly allied to it, the Capparis spinosa 

 is very abundant in the vicinity, perhaps the former supposition is the more 

 correct, and if hereafter the plant in question — or congeners with it — should 

 be found more plentifulU', not only in Australia, but also in India, wherein 

 the Capparis spinosa is also indigenous, we should be somewhat justified ia 

 assuming that it originates from the last-mentioned plant. Many other 

 examples of strictly local plants might be cited to give weight to the fore- 

 going hypothesis of the origin of species, such as Scaevola chenopodiacea, 

 Chloanthes atriplicina, etc., of each of which probably not half-a-dozen in- 

 dividuals exist, but these will suffice to show the probability of the birth of 

 new species. 



On the other hand, there are forms which are continually being detected 

 in widely separated, and in some instances well-examined localities, and 

 which therefore appear to be nascent forms. As an example may be cited 

 that delicate little fern, Gymnogramma leptophylla, which has been successively 

 discovered in Eastern and Western Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania (in 

 two spots only), North and South Africa, extra-tropical South America, in a 

 few localities on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, on the mountains 

 of India, in the north of Spain, and lastly in the Channel Islands. Should 

 this fern be realh'- a nascent form, it would be highly interesting to determine 

 to which species it owes its birth, for we should then have an example of a 

 form verging on extinction. But we need not expect to see the parent species 

 * at once disappearing ; such a process must extend over a considerable period, 

 for all the individuals of the parent species in a given locality may not be 

 of the same age, nor may they all be equally precocious, or it may be, and 

 most probably is, that the new form is a reversion. However, all this may 

 be, this much is certain, that some variety or other of the common Brake 

 [Pteris aquilina) is found in every locality in which the fern in question has 

 yet been discovered, and should the Gymnogramma leptophylla still continue 

 to be detected in countries to which it has hitherto been a stranger, and should 

 the Pteris aquilina still be found in those new localities — a condition almost 

 sure to be fulfilled, since the Brake is almost cosmopolitan — then will there 

 be great probability, not only that the former fern is a nascent form, but 

 also that it owes its birth to the latter.. (Pp. 437-441.) 



Notwithstanding the discreet nature of tlieir individualism — a condition 

 determined perhaps by the forces inherent in the vegetable elements being 

 unable to combine so intimately as those proper to the animal elements — 

 plants are not exceptions to this law, for we find that when the blending of 

 individuals is most complete, the evidences of life— manifested by spontaneous 

 motion — are very apparent, as in the compound-leaves of many Legu- 

 minoscB, those of Biophyllum, etc. In the case of the genus Stylidiimi the 

 concretion of individuals is more perfect than in most other plants, the 



