for the year 1864. xcv 



originally expected to have furnished a separate Colonial 

 Flora to our special credit, have been sent to London, to be 

 incorporated in Mr. Bentham's " Universal Flora of 

 Australia ;" and although we cannot, like the State of 

 New York, have our own special volumes, yet a • great 

 interest must be felt by the colonists in this work, the 

 second volume of which, containing the Myrtacece and 

 Leguminosce, to which so many of our more important 

 plants belong, amongst other orders, may be expected to 

 appear this year. 



The National Museum of Natural History and" Geology, 

 with the application of economic geology to mining, agri- 

 culture, and the arts, has rapidly increased in the last as in 

 several preceding years, and would be found now, if suffi- 

 cient space existed for satisfactory examination, to bear 

 favourable comparison with some of the best in Europe in 

 several branches. Mineralogy and Geology are particularly 

 rich, although but a small portion of the collections can be 

 seen, and amongst the general Zoological collections which 

 are geographically arranged, a great number of rare and 

 interesting types have been brought together, as well as the 

 more ordinary species, in greater numbers than might have 

 been expected in so short a time as the Museum has been in 

 existence. One of the last additions is the famous collec- 

 tion of British insects of the late Mr. Curtis, containing all 

 the species referred to in his great work on the subject, for 

 all the original types in which our Museum must in future 

 be quoted, as well as for the original types of several of 

 Frazer's Niger Expedition species, and many other species 

 described before the Zoological Society of London. 



The assistance which I have received from the principal 

 scientific men in Europe and America in my endeavours, as 

 director, to make our National Museum worthy of the 

 country, has been of the most cordial and active kind, every 



