Sanitary Works," in which he showed that the savings resulting from judiciously constructed works of water supply and sewerage, would in about ten years equal the cost of the works; whether that is so or not, the health and comfort of the people are so largely dependent upon sanitary works, that every endeavour should be made to extend the blessings of a constant supply of good water to every township, and where conditions are in anyway favourable, a sewage system should be constructed.

I have taken up much of your time with an address which is probably too much made up of figures, but without figures I could not express in concrete form, the great advances that have taken place in twenty-five years in this State.

My thanks are due to heads of departments and many others, who have kindly supplied me with data.

NOTES ON ACACIA, No. II.-TROPICAL WESTERN

AUSTRALIA.

(INCLUDING DESCRIPTIONS OF NEW SPECIES.)1

By J. H. MAIDEN, I.S.O., F.R.S., F.L.S.

[Read before the Royal Society of N. S. Wales, June 6, 1917.]

As this paper includes a contribution towards a botanical bibliography of the Nor-West (North West), it is necessary to point out that this short and euphonious title has a technical meaning in Western Australia different to that usually understood in other parts of Australia.

a. The Nor-West of local land administration may be defined as extending from a little south of North West Cape (near Point Cloates) north easterly to, say, Wolla. wholly within the tropics, almost touching the tropic of Capricorn.

b. Jutson defines a North West physiographic division as extending along the coast from the mouth of the DeGrey River (20° approx.) in the north, to the mouth of the Murchison River (28° approx.) in the south. See Fig. 7, p. 32, where it is called the North West Peneplain. See also Fig. 10, p. 38.

On the north-east it is divided from the Kimberley Division by that portion of the Eastern Division known as the Great Sandy Desert. It is a fairly natural division, and I will refer to it on a future occasion when collectively reviewing the botanical provinces of the continent. The length of the present paper precludes this now.

c. I suggest that for present botanical purposes it will be desirable to add to the previous division (a), the Kim

13 by W. V. Fitzgerald; 3 by J. H. Maiden.

2 Bulletin No. 61, Geological Survey of W.A. (1914), p. 37.

berley Division (technically termed the Northern Division) and the area joining the two. We thus have the continuous coastal tropical districts of Western Australia as far as their junction with the Northern Territory, into which the western State insensibly merges, and there is no line of botanical separation between them. Indeed, the flora of the Nor-West cannot usefully be studied without taking cognizance of that of the coastal tropical portion of the Northern Territory. When more local floras have been worked out, we shall be able to construct botanical provinces irrespective of the political divisions. In the "Flora Australiensis" and Mueller's "Census," the Nor-West is sunk in the general term of North Australia.

So that we have three different Nor-Wests:a. Of local land administration.

b. From the DeGrey to the Murchison.

c. The Nor-West in its wide sense.

Jutson styles the Kimberley Division the Kimberley Peneplain, (op. cit., p. 33) contrasts it with the Eastern Division just to the south, and his remarks are well worthy of reference.

The only list of Western Australian plants known to me is based on Mueller's "Second Census of Australian Plants" (1889); it is Mueller and Morrison's "List of Extra-tropic West Australian plants" (Vasculares), in the "W. A. Yearbook for 1900-1," by Malcolm A. C. Fraser, Vol. I, p. 308. This list is based on Mueller's compilation for the 1896 Yearbook; Dr. Morrison, then Government Botanist of Western Australia, made a number of additions, and says (p. 308, foot-note):—

"...those recently recorded from within the tropical line have not been excluded from the present list, in spite of the wording of the title; and it is hoped that the next edition will form a complete census of the native plants of the State, including also

many of those tropical species which have hitherto been recorded as from Northern Australia." (The italics are mine.-J.H.M.)

The list was reprinted unaltered in 1903, and not subsequently differentiated, as the late Dr. Morrison hoped. In other words, there is no list of North Western Australian plants published.

Following is a tentative bibliography, arranged in order of date, of the plants of the Nor-West, which will assist in the publication of such a list.

1. Dampier, William. He visited Cygnet Bay on the North-west Coast in 1688. He made a second voyage to the west and north-west coast in H.M.S. "Roebuck" in 1699. For some notes on Dampier see my "Records of Western Australian botanists," (Proc. W.A. Nat. Hist. Soc. 1909).

Dampier brought a number of plants back to England, which are the oldest Australian plants known. About a dozen are still in the herbarium of the University of Oxford and figures (and notes) of them by Dr. W. Botting Hemsley, F.R.S., will be found in the "Western Mail," Perth, W.A., Christmas Number, 1898. There is no Acacia amongst them.

2. Baudin's Expedition, 1800-41 went from Van Diemen's Gulf to Cape Leveque. As a rule, the ships kept far from land, and hence few plants were collected. The natural history results were chiefly zoological; Leschenault de la Tour was botanist. Bentham records that the Expedition collected (1) A. bivenosa DC., which appears to be the first Nor-West Acacia collected of which we have any record.

See my paper on the "Earlier French Botanists as regards Australian Plants." This Journ. XLIV, p. 132.

"The first of the serial numbers of the Acacias enumerated in this paper.

3. Cunningham, Allan. "Narrative of a survey of the intertropical and western Coasts of Australia,...1818 and 1822," by Captain Phillp P. King, R.N., F.R.S., 2 vols. 1827. At vol. II, 497, are "A few general remarks on the vegetation of certain coasts of Terra Australis, and more especially of its north-western shores," by Allan Cunningham. Cunningham's remarks, which are of course valuable, for the most part consist of general sketches of the various families. The collecting places are stated, (they were all coastal) but it would appear that the plants, as a collection, were not described until Bentham undertook that work for the "Flora Australiensis." See p. 76.

4. "Beagle," (H.M.S.). During 1838-1841, Captains Wickham and Lort Stokes in H.M.S. "Beagle" began and completed an important series of coastal surveys on the North-west coast, discovering the Fitzroy and Adelaide Rivers.

The "Voyage of the Beagle" is quoted for a few specimens in the "Flora Australiensis." Captain Lort Stokes' work, "Discoveries in Australia, with an account of the coasts and rivers explored and surveyed during the voyage of H.M.S. "Beagle," in the years 1837-43." (2 vols. 1846), contains but few references to plants the Gouty-stemmed tree, Adansonia, (II, 116) being an important exception.

Dr. Benjamin Bynoe, the Surgeon, (see my "Records of W.A. Botanists") made some valuable collections, which went to Kew and were seen by Bentham for the "Flora Australiensis." Bentham sometimes gives the quotation Bynoe.

5. Grey, George. "Journals of two Expeditions of discovery in North West and Western Australia, during the years 1837, 38 and 39," (2 vols. 1841), contain few incidental references to plants, but the Natural History Appendices