THE AaCTORIAN NATURALIST. 



extended to about 80 congeners more, as gradually the material 

 may be completed, Baron von Mueller never publishing pictures of 

 any plants without giving analyses from bud to embryo. Boott's 

 extensive work 'Illustrations of the genus Carex,' published 

 between 1858 and 1867, contains however 600 plates; but in 

 many cases more than one plate is devoted to a species and of 

 numerous of the species, illustrated, pictures appeared previously 

 in other works. Baron von Mueller's intention is to elaborate now 

 delineatively next the about 120 species of Australian Salsolacese, 

 so many of our ' Saltbushes ' being highly valuable for 

 pasturage, he foreseeing that in time the most nutritive kinds 

 will have to be methodically reared on the cattle and sheep-runs, 

 " His dichotomous key, we learn, has now been printed about 

 three-fourth, all the orders, all the genera and most of the 

 dicotyledoneous species having passed through the press. 

 Though the completion of the descriptive volume of the 

 work became unavoidably delayed, this finally now proves 

 a gain, because he found that to render such a publication 

 really useful, he had to combine the brief dichotomia of 

 the characteristics with a kind of abridged descriptive flora, 

 a task almost doubly as great as such would prove for the 

 whole British flora. Some progress has been made with 

 descriptive elaboration of Australian plants, and it is hoped 

 that when the more urgent work, just now requiring attention, 

 shall have been finished, both Australian and Papuan plants will 

 more extensively come under examination than latterly was pos- 

 sible. Since the last Victorian edition of the ' Select plants for 

 Industrial Culture and Naturalisation' did appear in 1885, 

 much additional information has been collected for a new 

 issue of this work, which will be brought out in time, to be 

 used for the Centennial Exhibition. Another supplement to 

 the census of Australian plants is due also, and indeed the 

 manuscript ready for it. A wish has been expressed by some 

 of the few, who are here particularly engaged in the study of 

 avascular plants, that a descriptive volume concerning them 

 should be prepared for Australia purposely or at all events for 

 Victoria. The list of the evasculares, given in the eleventh 

 volume of the fragmenta phytographiae Australiae 1881, com- 

 prises 3516 species; since then vast additions have accrued in 

 this direction of research ; so that, if even the descriptions were 

 reduced as in Kuetzing's classic work ' species Algarum ' and 

 the synonymy and records of special localities mostly 

 omitted, we would still require for the evasculares 

 of ail Australia a volume quite as large as that 

 given in 1849 by the venerable author above mentioned, 

 whose 80 years' jubilee was celebrated a few months ago. 

 But if the descriptions and quotations are to assume the 

 extensiveness of detail displayed in the meritorious volume on 



