50 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



achieved. We shall therefore hope that the coming year will 

 introduce to the Club, papers by those who have hitherto from a 

 feeling of modesty refrained from contributing, thus giving the 

 Club the benefit of their valuable observations. 



For and on behalf of the Committee. 



DOUBLE FLOWERS. 

 By Rev. W. Woolls, Ph.D., F.L.S. 



A FEW years since, a writer in one of the English periodicals 

 mentioned it as a remarkable circumstance that no double flowers 

 had been found in Australia, and he gave several reasons for 

 supposing that, in this part of the world, there was an absence of 

 such causes as lead to the phenomenon in other countries. At the 

 period to which I refer, there was no record, so far as I have observed, 

 of any such flowers, for the volume of Baron F. ron Mueller's 

 Fraqmenta, in which he alluded to some double Epacrids, had not 

 been published, and perhaps no one in the colony with the exception 

 of the late Sir William Macarthur had paid any attention to 

 the subject. When some fifteen years ago, Epacris purpwasctms 

 was found with double flowers at the North Rocks, near Parramatta, 

 and also in the neighbourhood of Sydney, Sir William assured me 

 that he had seen similar flowers in the bush at Elizabeth Farm many 

 years previously. Since that time, different observers have paid 

 attention to the subject, and E. microphyUa has been found with 

 double flowers at the North Shore and Manly Beach, Two other 

 monopetaloug flowers have been found in a similar state, viz., 

 Convolvulus eruhescens and Walilenherqia graeilis (the Australian 

 Blue BeU), the former by the Rev.' T. V. Alkin, M.A., at 

 Campbelltown, and the latter by the writer in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of Richmond. Amongst polypetalous flowers. Baron 

 Mueller mentions Eriostemon olovalis as occurring with double 

 flowers ; and the Common Buttercup {Ranunculus lappaceus) has 

 been noticed near Bathurst and Parramatta in the same condition. 

 Ruhus 7osifolius, a native plant, is often seen with double flowers 

 when in cultivation, but I am not aware that it occurs so in a wild 

 state. It is probable, however, that it does. Double flowers are 

 generally great favourites with floriculturists, and they are usually 

 supposed to be the result of hybridization assisted by cultivation, 

 by which process the petals are increased in number by the transfor- 

 mation of the the stamens and pistils. In flowers really full, toe 

 whole of these are thus changed into petals, but in multiplicate and 

 proliferous flowers, this is oifly partially the case. The causes which 



