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apparatus of Goodenoviecs, one of our largest orders, especially commends 

 to the attention of Australian botanists the manner in which impregna- 

 tion is impeded or facilitated in this group of plants. He writes : — " Aa 

 far as can be judged from dried specimens, there seems to be considerable 

 diversity in the impediments opposed by the structure of the parts, as 

 well as in the contrivances provided for overcoming these obstacles. The 

 progress of development, however, can only be watched on the living 

 plant ; and it is in order to call to the subject the attention of any ob- 

 servers who may be resident in Australia that I lay before the Society 

 the peculiarities which I have observed." — Journal of the Linnean 

 Society Botany, vol. x., p. 204, 1868. The same author makes a similar 

 appeal in his paper " on the Styles of Australian Proteaeeee," 1. cit. vol. 

 xiii., p. 58, 1871. As his observations on the peculiar fecundating appa- 

 ratus of the plants of this order, which includes our common Banksias 

 and Grevillias, were made almost exclusively on dried specimens, "they 

 will require to be supplemented, and probably in several instances cor- 

 rected by those who can watch the process of ripening and mutual 

 action of the anthers and stigma on the living plants." 



The distribution of our native plants, especially in relation to hydro- 

 graphical and geological conditions, requires working out ; and little is 

 known respecting their medicinal uses. Economic botany has, however, 

 received much attention at the hands of Dr. Schomburgk, and the 

 successful efforts made by that gentleman to acclimatise useful and 

 ornamental plants have laid the country under a debt of gratitude to 

 him. The Botanical Garden needs no advocate ; and its Director has 

 not been unmindful of the claims of systematic botany to be adequately 

 represented ; yet it lacks one important adjunct, namely, a museum of 

 economic botany, devoted to the illustration not only of the raw 

 materials industrially valuable, but also of steps in the processes by 

 which^they are rendered available for our use. 



Cryptogamic Botany. — The present state of our knowledge of the 

 Orders Filices, Lycopodiacese, and their allies will be found in volume 

 Vll., " Flora Australiensis." From the circumstance that many of the 

 Australian fungi are either identical with European species or so nearly 

 allied to them, the peculiar Australian forms being few in number, it 

 cannot be hoped that any satisfactory determination of them can be 

 undertaken in this country, though it is no bar to extended observations 

 on the recorded species or to the search for undiscovered ones. The Rev. 

 M. J. Berkeley has given a list of " Australian Fungi, received principally 



