THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



cordial reception by the members of the University Union of 

 Mr. Topp's valuable and suggestive lecture on the study of 

 natural history, and by the recent declaration of the master of 

 Queen's College (whom we are glad to welcome as a member 

 of this Club) of the intention of that college to pay special 

 attention to natural science. I may add that Trinity and 

 Ormond Colleges do not by any means purpose to neglect " the 

 science side." 



I will now refer to some of the more interesting publications 

 in the year relating to Australian natural history. In our own 

 colony Professor M'Coy has brought out Decades XIV. and XV. 

 of his " Prodromus of Zoology." In these are beautifully- 

 executed plateSj by Mr. Bartholomew and Dr. Wild, of several 

 of our lizards and fish, including Banks' oar-fish (Regalecus 

 Bariksii), which the professor considers to be the genuine " sea- 

 serpent' of mariners, the gorgeous parrot-fish (Labrichthys 

 Bleekeri), the sea gar fish, whose silvery sides reflect the light 

 in the lithograph almost as in the water, and the familiar, 

 rugged form of the Melbourne crayfish, which Professor M'Coy 

 identifies with the palinurus of the Cape of Good Hope and of 

 New Zealand, after close examination of the type specimens at 

 Paris. The decades have now illustrated thirteen species of our 

 snakes, nine of our lizards, and forty-four of our fish, besides 

 examples of many other classes. Dr. M'Gillivray continues his 

 work on the polyzoa, and Mr. Bale on the hydrozoa. Professor 

 Spencer has in hand a monograph of the giant Gippsland earth- 

 worm for the Royal Society, in which he is exhaustively studying 

 and illustrating its anatomy and histology. I will read the 

 following note from Baron von Mueller as to the botanical work 

 done during the year : — 



"As particularly noteworthy should first be mentioned, that in 

 conformity with the volume on Myoporinse a dozen decades 

 of the ' Iconography of Australian Acacias ' has been issued by 

 Baron von Mueller within the year under the aid of Mr. G. Lueh- 

 mann, the drawings and the lithographing throughout being by Mr. 

 R. Graft". What makes this large contribution to pictural illustra- 

 tive Botany all the more remarkable is the absolute originality of 

 the work, none of the 120 species of Australian genuine Acacias, 

 — thus already delineated, — having ever been depictured before. 

 This can be said of but few works in the whole range of botanic 

 literature within the precincts of one genus. Pallas' Species 

 Astragalorum published in 1800 certainly illustrates about a 

 liundred species partly of Astragalus and partly of Oxytropis, but 

 only scanty analytic details are given. Boissier's Icones Euphor- 

 biarum published in 1856, also exhibit about 120 species of that 

 genus, but the Iconography of Australian Acacias is to be 



