186 CENSUS OF PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO AUSTRALIA. — 
h ype 
shall have become well known, finally to be no dispute ; whereas 
the circumscriptions of genera will ever to a large extent depend 
optionally on individual ideas of any particular systemati 
These views I have expressed publicly more than twenty years ago, 
and subsequent research has not led me to change them. 
In tracing the priority of each genus, I have checked the nota- 
tions as far as from 1700 to 1862 by the great nomenclator of 
Pfeiffer, a work of most extensive records, resulting from almost 
unexampled patience, displayed in excerpting from thousands of 
volumes of literary treasures in great centres of modern learning 
Bentham and Hooker’s grand ‘‘ Genera Plantarum,” aided largely 
in quoting from the literature of the last twenty years or 
Dicotyledoneae, Jackson’s Guide to the Literature of Botany, 
i Ited. Richter’s 
e 
* 
which carries to the present year, has also been consu 
Codex was a safe guide through all the writings of Linné. 
small but important volume of Fraas proved the surest clue to 
many of the plants of the most ancient authors. 
In dealing with the synonymy of the genera, it was not deemed 
necessary to do more than to give the bare name of those suppres 
geen not 8 
corrections in the wording of genera, I hav have, a 
reason to change the original authorship of either, then I 
all events, avoided far-stretching pedantry. : 
It is not likely that very many genera will be added hee 
to the number of those recorded now as Australian, unless realms 
the classes of the lower eryptogams, and especially from the 
of microscopic organism. : per, 2» 
This census embraces 2,122 adopted genera, W hn 
applying views less conservative, might have be 
enough. No less than 300 authors from the time of the peer 
Greeks and Romans to our own era stand sponsors gee ap 
plants, represented in our part of the globe; thus 
rae for creating the science of the . gers 
wn of natural history are brought in close ©". mighty 
extended efforts of paleaiadioval ages, as well as with the al 
strides of the last century, which culminated, 80 far 
ing records are concerned, in the finishing sway 
secular epoch, 
