50 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



River, Oldfield. No transits have been found between these two 

 species in all the dissections instituted. 



Helipterum Jesseni is the seventeenth plant, which among 

 vasculares has been added to the records of species, indigenous 

 to this colony, since two years ago the " Key to the System of 

 Victorian Plants" was issued. The others are : — Clematis 

 glycinoides, Kochia aphylla, Eucalyptus Mueller i, Ctyptandra 

 spatulala, Aster Frostii, Aster picridifolius, Quinetia Urvillei, Heli- 

 chrysum Stirlingi, Helipterum Iceve, Calacephalus Drummondi, 

 Erechtites mixta, Caladenia Cairnsiana, Drakcea irritabitis, Corys- 

 anthes unguiculata, Prasophyllum Frenchii, Cystopteris fragilis. 



(To be continued.) 



NOTE ON A NEW VICTORIAN ORCHID, 

 By Baron von Mueller, K.C.M.G., F.R.S., &c. 



CORYSANTHES UNGUICULATA, R. Brown. 



Until Mr. Fitzgerald issued his splendid drawings and lucid 

 remarks on Australian Orchidese, the above-named plant was 

 almost exclusively known from Bauer's plate (18) in Endlicher's 

 " Iconographia Generum Plantarum," published 1838, the delinea- 

 tion being augmented by extensive analytic details. The writer had 

 never seen the plant, either in the field or in any collections, to 

 which he had access, unless — as he thinks — he saw plants without 

 any flowers somewhere beyond Brighton, never expecting that it 

 could be this rare floral gem, so long looked for. It may how- 

 ever be readily missed, as being in blossom at the earliest spring, 

 or it might be passed by, regarded from the distance to be C. 

 ptuinosa. 



Bentham indeed informs us ("Flora Austral," vi., 350), that it is 

 wanting in the herbarium of the great orchidographer Lindley, 

 and he had only seen three specimens — one in R. Brown's collec- 

 tion (on which the description in the " Prodromus " p. 328 must 

 have been founded), and two in Cunningham's, all from the 

 vicinity of Port Jackson. Mr. Fitzgerald saw it also in two places 

 only during his many years' excursions in quest of orchids. Thus 

 it was most gratifying, when in the course of this month Mr. Ch. 

 French, jun., through his persevering botanic searches, not only 

 discovered the plant for Victoria and that rather near the metro- 

 polis, but more, found it in abundance within a limited area 

 on moist soil amongst Leptospermum scoparium and Melaleuca 

 squarrosa between Oakleigh and Cheltenham. This will be an 

 indication, how further to search for this species. Anyhow, now 

 all the principal botanic museums can be supplied. The leaves 

 are occasionally somewhat three-lobed and the reddish hue on 

 the under side may sometimes remain much wanting. 



