118 
THE CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST OF AUSTRALASIA. 
May 1, 1887. 
LABELLING MIXTURES. 
At the meeting of the Melbourne City Council on April 
the following report of the Legislative Committee was adopted^ 
NOTES ON AUSTBALIAN PLANTS, 
By Baron Von Mueller, K.C.M.G., M. A Ph.D., F.R.3. 
(Continued.) 
That it be suggested to the hon. the Chief Secretary that in any amend- 
ment of the Public Health Statute, provision be made in {regard to all 
articles of food or drink sold as composed of any principal substance 
mixed with others, that the proportionate quantity of the principal sub- 
stance by which name the article is sold, be stated on the label covering 
such mixture. 
This is a startling and far-reaching proposition. At present 
it is merely a suggestion, and relates only to articles of food 
and drink. In the discussion it appeared that such articles 
as cocoa were in the minds of the Committee, and that the pro- 
posal meant that the packet of cocoa should bear a label stat- 
ing what per centage of cocoa proper it contained. But once 
the principle is admitted it will not be long before a proposal 
will be made to extend it to proprietary medicines and other 
articles. Imagine the flutter among the dovecots on the pass- 
ing of a law that the label should state how much castor oil 
there was in castor oil pills, how much fruit in fruit saline, 
how much limejuice and glycerine in that delectable compound, 
how much liver in liver pills, how much Windsor in Windsor 
soap. Once applied to foods, why should it not be extended 
to fabrics ? Why should we ignorantly buy flannel that is 
half cotton or silk that is half jute? We are no better able 
to judge of the quality of fabrics than of food ; we are equally 
injured by fraud; for in neither case is anything but the 
pocket concerned. No one can suppose for a moment that the 
admixtures now sold as articles of food are injurious to health, 
for if they were so their sale would immediately be injured. 
Indeed, it was admitted in the discussion that the intention 
■was to prevent injury to the purse of the public. 
Nor should the system stop at fabrics. Soai>, jewellery, 
snuff, artificial manures, upholstery, cutlery, and almost every 
article of ordinary consumption is liable to be falsified, and 
the untechnical purchaser deceived and defrauded. 
It is to be remembered that the proposal is that the propor- 
tion of the principal ingredients shall be declared, not the propor- 
tions of all the ingredients. This is a step towards rationality, 
but we very much fear that there is little chance of the sugges- 
tion ever becoming law in any reasonable period. 
The Royal vSociety of New South Wales offers 
Prizes for its medal and a money prize of £25 for the 
Scientific best communication on the chemical composi- 
WoRK. tion of the products from the so-called kerosene 
shale of New South Wales, to be sent to the 
honorary secretaries before May 1, 1888, also for the best com- 
munication on the chemistry of the Australian gums and 
resins, to be sent in before May 1, 1889. 
We have now received a small 
supply of the 
Reading Cases 
for 
“ THE CHEMIST AND 
DRUGGIST,” 
and can supply them to our 
readers at two shillings each, 
post paid to all colonies, except 
Queensland, where they will 
cost two shillings and sixpence 
post (paid. The postage 
amounts to sixpence in all 
colonies but Queensland, and the balance of the increase 
over the price in England is due to freight and duty and other 
expenses. 
The cases hold thirteen weekly issues, corresponding 
to half a volume. Orders will be filled in rotation. 
Acacia Graffiana. 
Glabrous ; branchlets angular ; phyllodia narrow or almost 
linear-lanceolar, nearly straight or slightly falcate, greyish- 
green, one-nerved ; the margin thickened ; veins concealed ; 
glands almost basal ; flower-heads rather small, in short 
racemes, the young inflorescence enveloped in large roundish 
scale-like bracts ; sepals extremely narrow, dilated at the 
summit, hardly half as long as the nerveless petals ; fruit 
much coiled, conspicuously compressed, rather narrow ; seeds 
placed longitudinally, more than half as broad as the pericarp, 
duli-black, lateral areole minute ; funicle thin, shorter than 
the seed, not dilated into a strophiole. 
In South-Western Australia ; James Drummond. 
This species occurs unnumbered in Drummond’s collec- 
tion, and seems not to have been distributed, it having been 
probably among the last of his gatherings. It differs from A. 
subcoerulea particularly in shorter inflorescence, narrower 
sepals, circularly twisted fruit with thinner and narrower 
pericarp, seeds broader, not placed transversely, nor shining, 
with much smaller areole and not folded funicle. Our new 
species is easily distinguished from A. Lindleyi by its much 
smaller and not prominently veined phyllodia, further by the 
neither acute nor striate bracts ; probably also the fruit of A. 
Lindleyi will prove very different, it being as yet unknown. 
Mrs. M‘Hard sent branchlets of that species with flower-buds 
from the Blackwood-River. A. Graffiana bears also affinity to 
A. iteaphylla ; but the latter has disconnected petals very 
much longer than the sepals, the bracts less blunt, the fruit 
broader and almost straight, the funicle upwards conspicu- 
ously thickened and the seed areoles larger ; it is now known 
also from the Gawler-Ranges, according to specimens commu- 
nicated by Charles Ryan, Esq. 
The dedication of this new species is to Mr. Robert Graff, 
the accomplished and zealous artist, who recently finished the 
lithographic illustrations of the “ myoporinous plants,” and 
who has since drawn and engraved many plates for the Icono- 
graphy of Australian Acacias and allied genera, in the fourth 
or fifth decade of which work Acacia Graffiana will appear. 
These decades should prove also particularly adaptable to 
pharmacists, as so many of the species of the large genus 
Acacia furnish also in Australia tan-bark and mimosa-gum, 
and as the fragrant exhalations of the flowers may likely yet 
by new methods become available for perfumery. 
It may aptly here be remarked that the so-called pods of 
leguminous plants are solitary portions of an apocarpous fruit, 
as demonstrated by the plurality of pistils in Aftonsea and in 
the section Archidendron of Albizzia. 
It may here also be observed, that it will for cultural and, 
especially for technologic purposes be best, to return to the 
appellation A. mollissima for our common Black Wattle, by 
which name it had been distinguished from the typical A. 
decurrens, described as Mimosa decurrens by Donn (Hort.. 
Cantabr. 114), so far back as 1796, and illustrated by Yentenat 
(Jard. de La Malinaison t. 61) in 1804. This earliest des- 
cribed of our wattles seems within Victorian territory limited 
to the North-Eastern regions ; the branchlets from the de- 
currence of the leafstalks are still more angular than those of 
A. mollissima and A. dealbata ; hence the specific name ; the 
leaflets are conspicuously longer, and the flowering time is. 
different from that of either of the two ; moreover, the bark is 
considered for tanning purposes not quite so powerful as that 
of A. mollissima. In connection with the early literature of 
Australian Acacias it may also be remarked, that the A. subu- 
lata of Bonpland (Descript, des plant, rar. cult, a Malmaison, 
110, t., 45), is referable to A. linearis of Sims, the latter 
name as far the aptest deserving to be maintained, though 
published a few years later than that given by Bonpland. 
Cunningham’s and Leichhardt’s plants, drawn to A. subulata. 
by Bentham, belong however to quite a different species. 
Pharmacists, established in various places of Australia, par- 
ticularly in far inland-regions, could much promote the fur- 
I ther elucidation of many yet obscure species by sending 
flowering and also well-fruiting branchlets of any of the 
Acacias, occurring in their vicinity. 
