PREFACE. 
Tue only Census of New South Wales plants in existence is that of my 
predecessor, Mr. Charles Moore. It was published in 1884, and consists of 
nothing more than a list of Phanerogams and Vascular Cryptogams taken 
from Mueller’s Census of Australian plants, with the volume and page of 
the Flora Australiensis added. 
The endeavour of authors of scientific classification of plants is to group 
them naturally according to their affinities, indicating their development 
from the lowest forms to the highest, but the so-called Natural System used — 
in the Flora Australiensis is natural only in the principal groups, and not 
-eventhat. The position of the Gymnosperme as a group of the Dicotyledonx 
is quite unnatural. 
At the same time, the Australian botanist surely need not be reminded of 
his daily indebtedness to Bentham’s classic, the Flora Australiensis (1863— 
1878), while he, in conjunction with the botanists of the whole world, is pro- 
foundly indebted to the Genera Plantarum of Bentham and Hooker (1862- 
1883), and without that monumental work the authors of subsequent systems. 
could not have developed.their methods. — 
In Mueller’s system, as shown in his “ Census of Australian Plants,” some 
families are grouped more naturally, but he continued to leave the Gymno- 
sperm in an unnatural position, and he succeeded only in putting a new 
artificial system in the place of the old and very popular one. Alexander 
Braun’s system, published in 1864, is the first system that has a real claim to 
the name, “ Natural System.” A. W. Hichler’s came next. A. Engler’s, 
the system followed in the present Census, is the latest development. Of 
course, no system can claim to be perfect. If all vegetable forms that lived 
in former pericds of the earth’s history had been preserved, we would have 
been able to compile a sure guide to a natural system, but how few and_ 
imperfect are the fragments preserved! Some isolated forms can be only 
placed tentatively at present, until later discoveries may show their true 
affinities, 
The Division, ““ Embryophyta Siphonogama ” of Engler (Phanerogame) 
comprises the sub-divisions Gymnosperme and Angiosperme; the former 
have only a few living families, but more extinct ones, known only by frag- 
mentary fossil remains, are now recognised as a transition from the flowerless 
plants to flowering plants. The latter are divided into two classes Monocotyl- 
edonew and Dicotyledonez.. 
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