THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



sidering the question of the origin of our flora and its relations to 

 other floras. Our honoured patron has also commenced the 

 publication of a series of descriptive plates on the Salsolacese of 

 Australia, an order especially interesting to us as embracing the 

 valuable salt-bushes of the interior plains. Baron von Mueller 

 has also published in the second part of the first volume of the 

 " Transactions " of our Royal Society, descriptions of 80 species of 

 highland plants from New Guinea, collected during the expedi- 

 tion of Sir W. MacGregor to the Owen Stanley Ranges. This 

 collection, as the Baron points out, suggests some curious and 

 difficult problems in regard to the origin of the alpine flora of 

 the island, a considerable portion of it having a close affinity to 

 the flora of Tasmania and Australia, with relationships also to 

 that of Fuegia and Patagonia. 



The same publication contains an excellent epitome of the 

 organization of Australian tribes, by another of our members, Mr. 

 A. W. Howitt, dealing with the social organization, tribal govern- 

 ment, form of group and individual marriage, and relationship 

 terms. Descriptions of the anatomy of a parasitic worm and of a 

 Land Planarian, by Professor Spencer and Mr. A. Dendy respec- 

 tively, will also be found in this volume. 



Professor M'Coy has published, during the year, two additional 

 decades of the " Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria," containing 

 descriptions and plates of two lizards, five of our food fishes, the 

 common Cuttlefish, and the Great Red King-Crab, by himself, and 

 descriptions and plates of 41 species of polyzoa by Dr. 

 M'Gillivray, 21 of which have been specifically defined by the 

 author. In the "Proceedings of the Royal Society" will be found 

 also a valuable paper by our late president, Mr. A. H. S. Lucas, 

 being a systematic census of indigenous fish hitherto recorded 

 from Victorian waters. The list includes 233 species, with ver- 

 nacular names and localities where found, and references. 



Important works of the year published in other colonies, 

 dealing with subjects in which our members are interested, are 

 Mr. J. H. Maiden's " Useful Native Plants of Australia" (Sydney), a 

 work which brings together in a compact form material hitherto 

 scattered through various scientific periodicals, and for the 

 accuracy of which its author's name is a guarantee, and Mr. R. 

 M. Johnston's " Geology of Tasmania," which contains memoirs 

 by the author previously only to be found in the Transactions of 

 the Royal Society of Tasmania. 



We pay now congratulate our fellow-botanists in South 

 Australia in having so excellent an aid to the determination of 

 species of the extra-tropical portion of the colony as is furnished 

 by Professor Ralph Tate's handbook, published this year, which, 

 it is needless to say, is a model of perspicuous arrangement. 



In the report of the first meeting of the Australa ian Associa- 



