Proceedings of Learned Societies. 
401 
ON A NEW SPECIES OF DAWSONIA. 
Dr. R. K. Greville describes in the Annals of Natural History 
for April, 1847, a new species of Dawsonia, which he has called 
D. superba, stated to have been received from D. A. C. G. 
Augustus Erskine, Australia. Dr. Greville describes this beau¬ 
tiful moss, as “ fully fourteen inches high, the leaves are an inch 
in length, linear-subulate, less rigid than in D. polytrichoides, 
and spreading in a more lax manner, spinuloso-dentate, but only 
toothed at the back of the nerve near the apex. At the lower 
extremity the very wide membranaceous sheath is of a fine pur¬ 
plish pink colour. Seta three-fourths of an inch in length. Cap¬ 
sule with the operculum, resembling that of D. polytrichoides, 
but twice as large.” 
This species seems to be identical with one sent by me to Sir 
Wm. J. Hooker in 1837, and subsequently to Dr. Robert Brown, 
who named it in a letter, D. longifolia. If it is the same, the 
writer found it abundantly growing in patches on the ground 
under fern trees ( Dicltsonia antarctica), in the forest between 
Emu Bay and the Hampshire Hills, Van Diemen’s Land ; but as 
Mr. Erskine resides at Port Phillip, it is probable that his spe¬ 
cimen was found in some of the dense forests which exist to the 
eastward of Melbourne, where a somewhat similar vegetation 
prevails.— Ronald C. Gunn. 
PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 
_ 
GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
April 12, 1847. 
A paper was read * On Wine-growing in New South Wales,’ by 
Mr. John Hector.—It would appear that the cultivation of the 
vine promises beneficial results to the settler, not only as regards 
the manufacturing of wine for the consumption of the colonists 
themselves, but also as leading to its eventual exportation to 
England. Neither is the cultivation to be regarded solely in 
