28 
President’s Address. 
which now numbers about 200,000 specimens from all parts 
of the world. It is expected that the vaious fasciculi will 
be arranged in the course of the year. 
Many of the new plants discovered by Dr. Muller in 
Australia, have been first made known through the 
transactions of our Society. The more extensive publi- 
cations of his botanical labours for the Government 
have made a marked advance during the past year, 
in which part of the second volume of the “Plants 
Indigenous to Victoria,” and part of the fourth volume of 
the “Fragments Phytographice Australia}” have been 
printed, so that they may be expected to appear this year. 
The specimens and observations accumulated at the expense 
of this Colony during several years, and which were 
originally expected to have furnished a separate Colonial 
Flora to our special credit, have been sent to London, to be 
incorporated in Mr. Bcntham’s “ Universal Flora of Aus- 
tralia and although we cannot, like the State of New York, 
have our own special volumes, yet a great interest must be 
felt by the colonists in this work, the second volume of 
which, containing the Myrtacece and Leguminosce, to which 
so many of our more important plants belong, amongst 
other orders, may be expected to appear this year. 
The National Museum of Natural History and Geology, 
with the application of economic geology to mining, agri- 
culture, and the arts, has rapidly increased in the last as in 
several preceding years, and would be found now, if suffi- 
cient space existed for satisfactory examination, to bear 
favourable comparison with some of the best in Europe in 
several branches. Mineralogy and Geology are particularly 
rich, although but a small portion of the collections can be 
seen, and amongst the general Zoological collections which 
are geographically arranged, a great number of rare and 
interesting types have been brought together, as well as the 
more ordinary species, in greater numbers than might have 
been expected in so short a time as the Museum has been in 
existence. One of the last additions is the famous collec- 
tion of British insects of the late Mr. Curtis, containing all 
the species referred to in his great work on the subject, for 
all the original types in which our Museum must in future 
be quoted, as well as for the original types of several of 
Frazer’s Niger Expedition species, and many other species 
lescribed before the Zoological Society of London. 
