HIGHLAND PLANTS FROM NEW GUINEA. 30 
Papuan plant would belong rather to the Libocedrus-region. The characteristics of 
the staminate spikes are, as we all know, the same in Libocedrus, in Thuya and in 
Biotia. Among species of Libocedrus this Papuan one approaches through the great 
disparity of its lateral and its marginal leaves nearest to L. decurrens; but it is 
separated at once by the marked broadness of its leaves, and is likely different also as 
regards fruits, irrespective of geographic considerations. 
The collection contains furthermore branchlets of what will likely prove a 
Nageia, the leaves of which resemble those of N. ferruginea, but are larger and more 
pointed ; they may however only exhibit the young state of foliage in the manner of 
N. cupressina, so that no clear idea about this tree can as yet be gained. In later 
less perilous and then not necessarily so hurried expeditions we shall doubtless learn 
also more about this. 
Branchlets of another so-called Conifer came also from the very summit of the 
Owen Stanley’s Ranges; but until the staminate flowers and the fruit will be 
discovered, this plant can neither be placed even yet into a generic position. Leafy 
branchlets of it are quite lycopodinous in appearance; they may represent a 
Dacrydium, and remind of D. cupressinum, but the foliage is much more rigid; they 
might also be likened to those of Pherosphera Fitzgeraldii, but the leaves are more 
spreading and more pungent, so that the resemblance is still less with the foliage of 
D. araucarioides. Araucaria Cunninghamii appears to reach in New Guinea very high 
elevations. Mr. Sayer noticed it on a mountain, next to Mount Obree, up to 
8000 feet, but its utmost altitudinal position has not yet been determined. 
Incidentally it may here be added, that for the name-giving of this Araucaria the 
authority is claimed by Steudel, in the Nomenclator Botanicus, edit. sec. 118, 
probably from the first edition of that work, issued in 1821. 
It seems to me preferable, to leave the Conifer systematically at the end of the 
Dicotyledonez, instead of placing them next to the Lycopods, because however much 
they may approach the latter in some respects of anatomic structure and in 
peculiarities of some of their organs, yet the preponderance of their characteristics 
seems clearly to be with dicotyledonous plants, notwithstanding their allance to 
the still more aberrant Cycadex. Remarkable instances of some analogies in 
particulars of organisation are exhibited also by other orders of plants, without 
thereby any close mutual affinity being indicated; thus the pluri-cotyledonous 
embryo of many Conifer is repeated by the otherwise very distant Nuytsia and 
by several species of the equally remote genus Persoonia, while from the similarity 
of the staminal apparatus of Asclepiadex to that of numerous Orchidex an actual 
affinity of value for taxonomy could not well be demonstrated. 
