THE TASMANIAN NATURALIST. 
matter of individual opinion how far the 
name shall cover varieties, and where 
another name shall he used. Botanists 
have Ion" given up the idea of immuta¬ 
bility. and recognise that except 
in favoured cases a specific name 
is only a convenient but arbi¬ 
trary appellation for a poorly cir¬ 
cumscribed group of varying forms. Bi¬ 
ologists in order to avoid confusion, de¬ 
scribe a particular being under a certain 
name. -That form, whether well or ill 
chosen, becomes for all time the type 
bearing that name, and all related forms 
are compared with it. The cider gum 
otf tl'a.-iuinnih is the type ifot'm of "Jiiircal- 
vptus guntiii” of Hooker. Any persons 
who endeavour to shift this .nark com¬ 
mit an offence against, the laws of botani¬ 
cal nomenclature. They not only rob 
the first person of his little bit of spon¬ 
sored conceit, but raise up confusion in 
the work to he done by subsequent stu¬ 
dents. There has been no botanist so 
great that by his ipse dixit he could, 
witii certainty, change a name. N on 
Mueller, great as lie was, failed in most 
instances where he tried it. lie tried 
it in I860 with Hooker’s “Eucalyptus 
gurinii.” only to hear the unfortunate re¬ 
sult that to-day few Australian botanists 
refer to the same form when they use 
the name, and men, when they send 
orders to Australia for seed of "Eucalyp¬ 
tus gunnii” sometimes get what they 
want, hut they generally do not. The 
typical tree has a smooth, white bark; 
alternate, stalked, oblong, equal-sided 
leaves of rather thick texture, seldom or 
never pointed. Flowers are small, shortly- 
stalked, and three together in axillary 
umbels. The operculum varies from 
shortly hemispheric to nearly conical. 
The fruit is small oblong to hemispheric, 
about two to three lines diameter, with 
a thin rim, and sunk capsule. Even 
Hooker was guilty of an error. We have 
a tree common on lowlands closely re¬ 
lated to cider gum. it has somewhat 
different bark and leaves, more flowers 
in the umbel, different fruit, nit dif¬ 
ferent in degree, blit not essentially. 
Hooker described this a.s “Eucalyptus 
acervula of iSieber, which it certainly 
is not. Mueller, recognising <.ue error 
Hooker had made tried to remedy it bv 
making a worse one. He suppressed the 
name "acervula,” and adopted the plant 
so described ns the type form of "eucal¬ 
yptus gunnii” Hooker. It appears as 
such in his “Eucalyptographia,’’ with a 
little bit of the original form appearing 
us an interesting variety. The plate 
which appears in this number is a photo¬ 
graph of a sprig of the type plant. It 
is not a very good specimen, but was the 
best available. The piece with broad pale 
ten vos is the juvenile cor. lit ion of the plant 
Excursions. 
On Saturday, October 5, the first ex¬ 
cursion of the session was held, the ob¬ 
ject of study being botany, and the 
leader Mr. IL. Railway, iwho took the 
party to Bellerive and thence along the 
Rokehy-road. After walking about a 
mile a large low-lying piece of ground 
was met with, and here were found 
many flourishing shrubs, and in spring it 
look-’ quite gay with the following 
plants; Baeckia diffusa, Aotis villosa, 
Pimelia liuifolia, Lcucopogon cricoides, 
Epacris impressa, several acacias, and 
many other kinds. Club moss was also 
found growing freely. 
A botanical and ornithological excur¬ 
sion to Mount Direction per motor 
launch was held on October 19, the lead¬ 
ers being Messrs. L. Rod way and A. L. 
Butler. A good number of members at¬ 
tended. Unfortunately the locality did 
not prove to be a good one for cither 
branch, and the time available was too 
short to enable those present to reach 
a better hunting ground. The chief item 
in the bird line was a large nest in a 
oucalypt, which was probably that of a 
gos-hawk, as this bird was seen flying 
high overhead with -something in its 
claw. Wedge-tailed eagles lmd a nest 
near the summit of this mountain for 
many years, and the Stewarts, of ltisdon 
Ferry, have said they had been there for 
:’,o years. Young birds were reared for 
the last time in 1006. The tree they 
built in was an exceedingly hard one to 
climb, and few, if any, ever reached the 
nest. Tile tree blew down in July or 
August of this year, and scattered the 
nest amongst the scrub. 
A geological excursion to Sandy Bay 
was held on November 10, with Dr. F. 
Xoeiiing as leader. The cuffs on the 
roadside were first examined, and a clear 
account of their formation was given by 
•the leader. Collectors obtained fossil 
specimens of leaf impressions, etc., from 
the sedimentary deposits here. A visit 
was also paid to One Tree Point, where 
the strata of volcanic and sedimentary 
