36 ° 
Analyses of Books. 
[June, 
Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania for 
1884. 
We find here an account of the Ceylonese serpent eagle, 
nis spilogaster, with a notice of the distribution of the genus Spi- 
lornis, a typical Indo-Malayan form which possibly crosses 
Wallace’s line. . , , 
fudge Dobson made a timely protest against the wanton 
destruaion of the magnificent tree-ferns of Mount Wellington. 
He proposes that the Mount Wellington reserve should be made 
a people’s park, with appropriate penalties for the removal 0 
trees and ferns. . . c . 
Col Legge, in presenting to the Society a specimen of the 
brown fish owl, Ketupa Ceylonensis, remarked that no large owls 
were found in Australia except a variety of the barn owl known 
in England. In Tasmania no species of kite is found, thou G 
they are common in Viaoria, South Australia, and Western 
According to a paper read by Mr. R. M. Johnston, F.L.S., 
there is a marked rise and fall in the death-rate both in Europe 
and Australia, the periodicity of which closely corresponds with 
the maxima and minima of sun-spots and with the movement 
of Tupiter in his orbit from aphelion to perihelion. „ 
According to a copy of the “ Australian Shipping News laid 
on the table by Mr. M. C. Brown, a whale captured in Behring s 
Straits, in June, 1883, was found, when cut up to have embedded 
in his blubber a harpoon with the words Henty L., 1838 
branded upon it. The Henty’s, an old colonial family, had in 
18^8 a whaling establishment at Portland Bay, Victoria. 
Mr R. Henry described the damage to submarine cables in 
the Eastern seas, inflicfted by a species of Teredo, which bores 
th ™nlVap C « ^Tertiary Flora of Australia, communicated 
by Baron von Ettingshausen, the opinion is enunciated that t 
whole existing flora of the world can, in its development, be 
traced to an universal original flora of by-gone geological a b es. 
Mr R. M. Johnston, F.L.S., read a paper on the discovery of 
two ferns new to Tasmania. These are Hymenophyllum x mar- 
ginatum, hitherto only known in New South V a of the 201 
malineii, supposed to be peculiar to New Zealand. Of the 201 
species of ferns found in Australia and Tasmania, only 53 are 
found in the latter island, and only one of them is peculiar. 
