49. RECORDS OF OBSERVATIONS ON SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR’S 
Vittaria elongata ; Swartz, synopsis filicum, 109 et 302 (1806). 
Mount Musgrave, up to high altitudes. 
Fully half a hundred ferns, irrespective of Lycopodiacew, were brought by Sir 
William MacGregor from the uplands of the Owen Stanley’s Ranges. But as many 
of these may belong to the constantly misty region much below the terminal portions 
of these mountains, I have left most of these ferns phytographically untouched. 
Indeed I have, while just pressed with multifarious engagements, assigned the 
detail-examination of the ferns to Mr. J. G. Baker, who asa leading specialist in 
Pteridography since the last 25 years, aided by the princely recourses of Kew-gardens, 
continued in this particular direction there the previous extensive fern-studies of Sir 
William Hooker, Ag regards the two species, now described by me, Mr. Baker 
concurs in my view, that they should be considered as hitherto unknown. Named 
specimens of many of these plants, especially the new kinds, were submitted at the 
Royal Society’s Meeting, held on the 13th September, 1889; the descriptions passed 
through the press in September, October and November 1889, and the whole was 
issued towards the end of the latter month. 
Dawsonia superba ; Greville in the Annals of Natural History xv. 226 t. 12 (1847). 
Owen Stanley's Ranges. 
This tall moss was in a sterile state brought from the less elevated ranges of 
New Guinea before, as mentioned already in my “ Papuan Plants,” II. 22. Sir 
William MacGregor succeeded in getting a fruit-bearing specimen now from this new 
region. 
IT. General Considerations. 
The memorable expedition, so valiantly and circumspectly carried out by His 
Excellency Sir William MacGregor, the Governor of British New Guinea, for the 
ascent and exploration of the Owen Stanley’s Ranges, has for the first time brought 
also the flora of the temperate and the sub-alpine zone of that great island within the 
reach of elucidation. In a brief preliminary report, written in July last, attention was 
drawn to the extraordinary commigration, by which plants of Asiatic, of far southern 
and even of sub-antarctic types had mingled together in the Papuan highlands. From 
the material, thus brought together, only a commencement could be made, to study 
the vegetation of the higher mountains regarding geographic points of view; in order 
to obtain a full insight into the Papuan alpine flora, it would require, to explore the 
hitherto inaccessible more central culininations in the island, where on tiers still some 
few or perhaps several thousand feet higher in yonder latitudes, according to varied 
physical conditions, a glacier-flora would be more fully reached. To form extensive 
conclusions on the nature of the Papuan alpine flora would at present be premature ; 
