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handful of people, very few of whom were educated; they came to a continent whose 

 flora was unknown, even to botanists, and, as they spread into new a eas they gave similar 

 names to trees which appeared to them to be similar, and which, in many cases, have 

 only recently been shown to be different. 



The predominant vegetation (Eucalyptus) has a more or less similar facies, and it 

 is not to be wondered at that the ordinary citizen has shown no greater knowledge of it 

 than the botanist. Then again, the early colonists had a limited vernacular, because they 

 could only use comparative terms, and the trouble was that the plants of their native 

 countries were about as unlike those of their new homes as it was possible for them to be. 



In some cases the aboriginal names have been adopted by the white population. 

 Some attempt has been made to standardise the vernaculars for Australian plants, but 

 the chief difficulty arises from the fact that all over the world experience shows that 

 most plant names are restricted to small areas. However, with the spread of education, 

 it is confidently expected that the use of botanical names, at least as to genus, will present 

 fewer difficulties. Of course, it must be borne in mind that the study of natural history 

 has an attraction for only a limited portion of the population, while of the naturalists 

 but few take special interest in plants, and fewer still in their vernacular nomenclature. 

 I do not think we can guide the public much in the use of vernacular names. A country's 

 plant names come by intuition, not by tuition. 



Botanists are bound by the decisions of the various International Botanical 

 Congresses (that of Vienna, 1905, being the most important), in regard to their names, 

 but the coiner of vernaculars is free as the air to make as much confusion as he sees fit. 

 Australians are inclined to be a law to themselves, partly because of their geographical 

 isolation, and a phase of this is that some are not willing to obey the botanical laws made 

 on their behalf in Europe. There will ever be extremists in coining new names, but 

 the two most remarkable cases in history are those of Swainson (for particulars see my 

 Presidential Address before the Linnean Society of New South Wales, Proc. Linn. Soc, 

 N.S.W., XXVII, 1902), and Otto Kuntze, whose vagaries of twenty years ago are well 

 known to taxonomist.^. 



The Victorian Plant Names Committee, with the best of intentions, has set out 

 to bolster up the use of vernaculars. Where more than one name exists for a 

 particular plant, a selection is made, after the fashion of the Acadamie Francaise. 

 Where there is no ascertained name, one is invented, such names being often transla- 

 tions of the existing botanical one. The question naturally arises in such a case, Why 

 not encourage the public to use the existing botanical one? I do not know any pre- 

 cedent for endeavouring to impose vernaculars on the community, and think that the 

 energy employed in such an attempt would be better expended in the advancement of 

 botanical science. 



la. — A few non-Australian opinions on Vernaculars. 

 In the " Scientific Papers of Asa Gray " (C. S. Sargent), two vols., 1889, at I, 106, 

 Gray discusses the attempts of Bentham in his " Handbook to British Flora " (1858) to 

 solve the problem of the utilisation and adaptation of vernacular names to a flora which 



