vi Preface. 



and for high educational institutions ; it was to serve the amateur- 

 gatherer of plants in the field as well as the professional investi- 

 gator in the exercise of stern duties ; and yet such a work was to 

 be inexpensive, concise and reliable. How far all these aspira- 

 tions have been realized, the practical use of the work now 

 completed must demonstrate ; the ardent endeavour of the author 

 at all events has been, to succeed in the use of a method, which 

 was chosen not at his free will, and under such restraint to produce 

 a work, which would render the study of plants in our dominion 

 more universal, and which could with some credit to the colony 

 be placed even into the libraries of the world. 



The organographic alterations, largely introduced into these 

 pages for the first time, in contrast to zoologic terms, have been 

 ventured on only tentatively, but without thereby in any manner 

 impairing the use of the work ; indeed they arose mainly from a 

 desire of the author, to simplify the wordings for organs of plants in 

 a book, written especially for almost a new country and particularly 

 for the juvenile portion of its population. This subject of desirable 

 changes in organography by simplifying verbiage and by keeping 

 apart from each other zoographic and phytographic expressions, 

 has comprehensively been discussed in a treatise, which was written 

 for the Sydney-meeting of the Australian Association for the 

 advancement of Science, and which has been promulgated by the 

 Royal Society of New South Wales already. The main reasons 

 for adopting some alterations in the Candollean system, also for 

 the present publication, have been set forth some years ago in 

 the " Systematic Census of Australian Plants with chronologic* 

 literary and geographic annotations." Before any opinion is formed 

 on these novations, the writings referred to should be studied with 

 attentive care. 



The elaboration of this volume could have been very much 

 facilitated, had simply a negative expression been chosen, whenever a 

 difficulty arose in searching for a contrasting phrase in the dualism 

 of the dichotomy, or had the characteristics of orders and of genera 



