CARMICHAELIA AUSTRALIS 
259 
top ; two other specimens without fructification and of which only 
one has a few imperfect leaves. The last specimen is a portion of a 
primary branch and secondary branches with a few leaves but no 
fructification.” 
In addition to this we have the sheet of the plant from Forster’s 
own herbarium, which was purchased by Lambert from Forster’s 
father-in-law, C. G. Heyne, of Gottingen, and acquired by Brown 
(for £7 10s.) at Lambert’s sale in 1842; this is written up by 
Forster as Lotus arboreus and bv David Don, Lambert’s curator, as 
Carmichwlia australis. There are six specimens (two of them in 
fruit) on the sheet, one of which looks somewhat different from the 
Banksian plant. Yet more different in habit and appearance is the 
plant of which a coloured figure is in Forster’s own drawings (ii. 202) 
with an impression from a plate prepared but never published : this, 
however, is written up as L. arboreus by Dryander and identified 
with Genista compressa. 1 note that T. Kirk (Stud. FI. N.Z. 114) 
and Mr. Cheeseman (Man. N.Z. FI. 117) refer Forster’s plant to 
C. jlagellif or inis , but there is no evidence that either of these 
authors had access to authentic material; Dr. Stapf’s identification 
with that species of the Forster specimen at Kew would seem to show 
that Forster may have had two plants under the name—his brief 
description of L. arboreus might well include both; but the Museum 
evidence shows that Brown himself identified Forster’s plant with his 
C. australis, and there is assuredly no ground for the supposition 
that either Forster’s specimen or Colvill’s plant (which Brown pro¬ 
bably never saw) entered into the original description of C. australis. 
It should be remembered that for the latter part of the eighteenth 
century and the earlier part of the nineteenth, the Banksian Her¬ 
barium—the foundation of the British Museum Herbarium—was the 
depository of the collections of Banks and his contemporaries; it also 
contains the MSS. based upon them of Solander and Dryander, which 
supply such information as is not afforded by the specimens and are 
equally available for consultation: the MSS. and collections of 
llobert Brown are similarly accessible. The foregoing note exemplifies 
the completeness of the information afforded by the Herbarium, 
which, in the ease of the collectors named and in tracing the early 
history of garden plants, might with advantage be consulted at an 
early stage of inquiry. 
ECHIUM POLYCAULON Boiss. 
By C. C. Lacaita, M.A., F.L.S. 
I?r June last I found this splendid plant covering acres of sandy 
pasture between the railway station of La Bazagona in Estremadura 
and the Bio Tetiar. It is a perennial; the stem, which always remains 
exceedingly dwarf, is terminated by a tuft of leaves, as in the related 
species peculiar to the Iberian peninsula, B. lusitamcum Jj. = B. 
Broteri Samp, and B. rosulatum Lange. The central rosette is poor 
at llowering-time, as in B. rosulatum , not well furnished as in 
