viii 
at the same time on a species, it should be free to those, who effect the reductions, to choose a 
collective designation for the consolidated species; cases in point are afforded by Euphrasia Brownii, 
Fimbristylis communis, Pappophorum commune, Danthonia penicillata. 
As to the circumscription of species themselves, it will require yet much of assiduous research 
of future generations for arriving at a full understanding of the diagnostic value, which has to be 
attached respectively to the thousands of specific and therefore original forms in the Australian 
and any other vegetation. Of the plants, enumerated as species in the present pages, a considerable 
number may prove, that they owe their particularity to hybridism. In such cases they should occupy 
a subordinate position, and should also here, as elsewhere, receive their double parental name— 
thus Lasiopetalum Tepperi would require to have its appellation changed into Lasiopetalum Baueri 
x discolor; but as the instances of ascertained hybridism among our native plants are as yet so 
very few, it was deemed best to admit at present the very limited number of known bastards 
under ordinary specific rank. 
The geographical limitations in this work coincide with the political boundaries of the colonial 
territories, except that the tropic of Capricorn eastward to the 138th degree separates what is 
here called Northern Australia (N.A.), from the South- and West-Australian extratropic possessions. 
Such geographic segregations are necessarily quite arbitrary, though they serve our present purpose 
of assigning to each of the colonial divisions of Australia its number of specified plants; the 
limitation is the same as that adopted in the “Flora Australiensis,” and as regards abbreviations 
also identical with the method of indications, chosen for the list of Australian trees in 1866. 
Here may it further be remarked, that the plants of the small and isolated insular spot, called 
Norfolk-Island, have been counted with those of N.S.W., to whose dominions this isle as well as 
Lord Howe’s Island politically belongs. To draw the species into physiographic and_ regional 
complexes must be the work of future periods, when climatic and geologic circumstances throughout 
Australia shall have become more extensively known. The geographic columns in these pages 
indicate simply the occurrence of plants within any of the colonial areas, but have been extended 
even to such spécies, which merely may pass boundary-lines. In this way are noted for W.A. 
and §.A. such tropical plants, as reach not beyond Shark-Bay or the vicinity of the MacDonnell- 
Range; in the same manner Victoria is credited with those plants of New South Wales, which 
barely advance into Hast-Gippsland, while South-Australia obtains credit for several Tasmanian plants, 
which are confined to very limited stretches of country, chiefly in the extreme south-east of that 
province; and again a few of the New England plants are recorded for Queensland, although they 
pass merely on to the nearest adjacent ranges across the boundary. At the whole however it 
can be foreseen, that many a species, still accepted as genuine for these lists, will in the course 
of further and more facilitated research be eliminated from any future editions of this work, 
though still larger arrays, containing many a novelty, will have to be mustered for systematic rolls. 
The lines of demarkation between truly indigenous and more recently immigrated plants can no 
longer in all cases be drawn with precision; but whereas Alchemilla vulgaris and Veronica serpillifolia 
were found along with several European Carices in untrodden parts of the Australian Alps during the 
author’s earliest explorations, Alchemilla arvensis and Veronica peregrina were at first only noticed 
near settlements. The occurrence of Arabis glabra, Geum urbanum, Agrimonia Eupatoria, Eupatorium 
cannabinum, Carpesium cernuum and some others may therefore readily be disputed as indigenous, and 
some questions concerning the nativity of various of our plants will probably remain for ever involved 
in doubts. While concluding these introductory remarks, it is incumbent on the writer, to acknowledge in 
grateful terms the consideration, shown him by the Hon. James Macpherson Grant, M.L.A., the Minis- 
terial Chief of the Department, in allowing this work to be issued under the auspices of the Victorian 
Government and at departmental expenditure. Encouraged by generous support, the author will 
cheerfully continue through such time, as may still be allotted for his worldly career, to devote his 
strength and resources also in future mainly for the furtherance of Australian phytography, on which 
much of his efforts were concentrated through more than a third of a century; and as_ these 
enquiries are largely carried on without worldly gain, he feels free, to claim the co-operation of 
any educated and high-minded colonists in these great dominions of the British Crown for promo- 
ting studies, which cannot fail to be of great industrial advantage at all future time, which are 
calculated to advance continuously the cause of education in this part of the world also, which must 
far and wide contribute to intellectual enjoyments, and above all should lead to religious reverence 
of that Supreme Godly power, so gloriously revealed in nature's wondrous works. 
