% President's Address 
gardens, which, with plants of the coffee, tea, and cork oaks, 
the Government botanist is anxious should be fairly tried 
in our fern-tree gullies. The great value and importance of 
acclimatising such plants as these in the colony can scarcely 
be over-estimated, and I am sure you will all join me in 
a hearty wish that the requisite support will be afforded to 
this undertaking, and that the effort will be rewarded with 
complete success. 
The phyto-chemical laboratory, not long since established 
in the Botanical department, has set vigorously to work 
in the vast field of research before it. An examination into 
materials likely to be available for paper-making has been 
commenced, and the Government botanist informs us ~ 
that over thirty different varieties of fibre suitable for this 
purpose have already been found; included in this list 
is the well-known stringy-bark, from which a fair writing 
paper has been made. Investigations imto the amount and 
quality of wood spirit and vinegar in many of our common 
trees, the conversion of some of the products into dyes 
and mordaunts, the determination of the amounts of potash 
and tannin in many plants and trees, and an examination 
Into the resins and picric acid products of the different 
species of Xanthorrhea or grass-tree are prominent among the 
subjects that have occupied this branch of the Botanical 
department during the last year. 
Turning from, botany to paleontology, we are informed 
of important discoveries in the rocks of this colony, the 
most interesting of which is doubtless that of a species of 
Squalodon (or Phocodon of Agassiz), closely related to the 
famous Phocodon Scillze of the Malta beds, and still more 
nearly related to the Phocodon (Squalodon) gratiloupi (Meyer) 
of the French miocene tertiary heds, near Bordeaux. Professor 
M‘Coy names the Victorian species, which occurs in the 
tertiary sands of Cape Otway, after the young geologist 
