for the year 1879. xxi 



Baron, has lately been published in England at the expense 

 of the Western Australian Government; this gives the 

 results of his personal observations in the summer of 1877 

 of the country lying between King George's Sound and 

 Shark's Bay. The fourth decade of his valuable work on 

 the eucalyptus family of Australia, which I referred to last 

 year, will be completed during the next three months or so. 

 The practical utility of such a work cannot well be over- 

 rated, for a knowledge of the peculiarities and properties of 

 the various orders of the immense family of gumtrees is a 

 matter of considerable importance and value, not only to the 

 botanist and arboriculturist, but also to the engineer and 

 the artisan. It is to be regretted that the author does not 

 now possess the requisite means for prosecuting his 

 researches, commenced long since, upon the properties and 

 products of living plants, and especially on this extensive 

 genus. His work on Select Industrial Plants is, I hear, 

 being republished as an Indian edition in Calcutta, by per- 

 mission of the Victorian Government, with additional im- 

 portant matter relating to the introduction of extra- Indian 

 plants for forest culture and for purposes of food. 



Our members interested in natural history have no doubt 

 been pleased to see that the botanical value, from an 

 educational point of view, of our beautiful gardens on the 

 Yarra has not been lost sight of by the energetic curator, 

 Mr. Guilfoyle, in his desire to make them a place of pleasure 

 and recreation for the public generally. The classification 

 he has adopted in the decoration of some parts of the gardens 

 is useful to many a student and lover of botany, and no 

 doubt will tend to an encouragement of the study of that 

 science. 



The achievements and acquisitions of the exact sciences, 

 as a rule, I believe, appeal more readily to the interest and 

 attention of the many than do the discoveries, improve- 

 ments, and applications in the less exact ones. Yet if we 

 take the sciences of medicine, sanitation, biology, and so on, 

 one would imagine that as they are so much more closely 



