xii Preface. 



worth while to effect the formal corrections already in the present 

 issue of the work ; in a future one some discrepancies, as regards 

 the wordings used for the first and for the second part of this 

 edition, can also be reconciled. Abbreviations have been avoided 

 throughout the text. Their use involves mental extra-exertions, is 

 confusing particularly to tyros and perhaps even deterring to 

 them, while all that possibly could be derived from a procedure of 

 shortening words or by employing symbolic renderings, would be, 

 to save a few pages printing in any popular small work of the kind 

 here under consideration. 



Although for an official publication like this rights cannot be 

 reserved, yet it is hoped, in the interest of the Public Department, 

 from which it emanated, that its originalities will be duly respected. 

 The permission for extensively transcribing (even under some 

 modifications) from these pages can only be conceded on terms of 

 fullest literary acknowledgment. But it may at once here be 

 mentioned, that when the results of this season's Victorian work in 

 botanizing shall have been attained, an extra-print of the dichotomic 

 notes will be furnished, into which the various new acquisitions to 

 the records of the Victorian flora can then also be embodied. 

 Indeed, for local publications to find out the names of plants, 

 occurring at any town or in any district of Victoria, the sole 

 reconstruction of the dichotomic notes would likely suffice, unless 

 subsidiary notes, though still more brief, were added also inas- 

 much as the present main-work would be readily at hand so that 

 the respective " Florules " could be brought out easily and inex- 

 pensively after fairly extensive botanic searches through any of the 

 delimited floral areas have been instituted. 



It remains for the author gratefully to acknowledge that Mr. G. 

 Luehmann, Senior Assistant in the Phytologic Department of 

 Melbourne, has aided extensively in setting out the dichotomic 

 phrases, after their elaboration and graduation had been com- 

 pleted, and that he as well as Mr. Ch. French, junior, an office- 

 assistant, gave much help in carrying out the clerical portion of 



