167 
Albert, and many excursions through Wilson’s Promontory, I quitted 
Gipps’ Land, returning homeward along the coast. 
“This journey, the lines of which extended over more than 1,500 
miles, enriched my collections formed during the spring so far that 
they comprise probably now more than half the indigenous vegetation 
of this Colony. For, according to the Index which I have annexed, 
including also several plants discovered previously by Sir Thomas 
Mitchell and by His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor, there are 
known to me now already 715 species of Dicotyledonee, belonging to 
286 genera and 83 natural orders ; 201 species of Monocotyledonee, 
comprehending 100 genera and 2] natural orders ; and 47 ferns, con- 
taining 27 genera. About fifty other species, however, which I have 
not included in this general account, are not yet so exactly examined as 
to receive their true systematic position, and are consequently not 
enumerated in the list; while fifty others, not indigenous, but intro- 
duced species, are likewise not taken into account, although they are 
not only naturalized beyond the possibility of extirpation, but even 
overpower the more tender indigenous plants. I regret that I was 
also obliged to omit from this Index all the lower Acotyledonez 
‘(mosses, Lichenistra, lichens, Algz, and Fungi), to the amount of at 
least 200 species, of which I could examine this winter too few to 
display them in a systematic arrangement. The full amount of spe- 
cies, therefore, considerably exceeds 1,100, belonging, with exclusion 
of the above-mentioned Acotyledonez and the foreign plants, to no 
less than 430 genera and 108 natural orders— proportions which far 
surpass those of Western Australia, where more than twice this num- 
ber of species (according to the collections of Dr. Preiss) are only 
divided into exactly the same number of genera already discovered 
here (430), and only into 91 families. 
“The Index might have been increased without difficulty to a two- 
fold number of names ; but through a long-continued examination of 
the Australian plants ina living state, I had the advantage of learn- 
ing how great is the uncertainty of many characteristics, which are 
deemed, even by our greatest authorities in science, sufficient for dis- 
tinction. According to the annexed enumeration, the proportion of the 
Dicotyledonez to the Monocotyledoneew will be found, for that part 
of the country over which my investigations this year extended, nearly 
as seven to two, and corresponds, therefore, exactly with the position 
which these great divisions of the vegetable kingdom hold to each 
other in South Australia up to the thirty-fourth degree South latitude 
(as shown in my observations on the South Australian Flora, lately 
