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CENSUS OF TBE PLANTS OF TASMANIA, 

 INSTITUTED IN 1875. 



By Baron Feed, von Mueller, C.M.G., M.D., PH.D., F.E.S. 



I. 



In the bye-following pages the first part of a statistic essay 

 on Tasmanian plants is submitted to the Royal Society. This 

 portion of the essay is limited to a list of those plants, which 

 hitherto have become known from the main-island and the 

 smaller isles under its political jurisdiction, as far as Di- and 

 Mono-cotyledoneae and Ferns are concerned. The arrangement 

 is effected chiefly in accordance with the Candollean system, 

 which in most respects represents that of Jussien in a reversed 

 series. But the apetalous orders of Jussien or the Mono- 

 chlamydeae of Candolle have been distributed, with the 

 exception of the amentaceous orders, in the other large 

 systematic divisions, and thus several ordinal groups of 

 plants, which by adherence to the usual methods of arrange- 

 ment would stand far apart, have been brought into close 

 proximity, according to their nearest natural affinities. Since 

 the completion of Dr. Hooker's great work in 1860 about fifty 

 cotyledonar plants, indigenous to the Tasmanian territory, 

 have been discovered ; but probably another half-hundred or 

 more could yet be added by future searches, especially if such 

 were further extended to King's Island and the interior north- 

 western regions of the main-island, where particularly among 

 the waterplants, rushes, sedges and minute weeds an exten- 

 sive additional harvestmight probably begathered. Along with 

 the generic and specific names in the list now prepared is also 

 quoted the particular publication, in which each plant became 

 systematically first established. Hence further details may be 

 traced out from these literary indications regarding also all 

 the plants, added since the publication of the Flora Tasmanica. 

 Bentham's important labours since 12 years on the vegetation 

 of all Australia have been of material aid not only in 

 augmenting the list to its present extent, but also in reducing 

 many specific names to older appellations, to be maintained 

 by the right to priority. To avoid any perplexities, which 

 might arise from this needful change of names, whenever Dr. 

 Hooker's fundamental work is to be consulted in connection 

 with this list, it became necessary to quote (which has been 

 done in brackets) the number or numbers, under which the 

 species are arranged at pages lvi.-lxxxiii., in the preface 

 to the Flora Tasmanica. Wide researches into the vegetation 

 of the whole of Australia, to which the writer has devoted 

 much of his time since the last 27 years, have tended to 

 change in many instances the limits assigned originally to the 



