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It is a remarkable fact, as he justly observes, that the angiospermous exogens, which comprise four-fifths of living plants a division to which all our native European trees, except the Coniferae, belong, and which embrace all the Compositae, Leguminosae, Umbelliferae, Cruciferae, Heaths, and so many other families are wholly unrepresented by any fossils hitherto discovered in the Primary and Secondary formations from the Silurian to the Oolitic inclusive.

The species to be described belong to ten families, and will be given in the following order: Bignoniaceae, Polemoniaceae, Leguminosae, Compositae, Smilaceae, Fumariaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Vitaceae, Sapindaceae, Passifloraceae. BIGNONIACEAE. This family contains many tendril-bearers, some twiners, and some root-climbers. The tendrils always consist of modified leaves.

On the neighbouring hills, which I explored up to 15,000 feet, I found many fine plants, partaking more or less of the Siberian type, of which Corydalis, Leguminosae, Artemisia, and Pedicularis, are familiar instances. I gathered upwards of 200 species, nearly all belonging to north European genera.

Certain plants excrete sweet juice, apparently for the sake of eliminating something injurious from the sap: this is effected, for instance, by glands at the base of the stipules in some Leguminosae, and at the backs of the leaves of the common laurel. This juice, though small in quantity, is greedily sought by insects; but their visits do not in any way benefit the plant.

The forest trees on the ironstone ridges were stringy-bark, and on the grassy hills box, Moreton Bay ash, and a tree belonging to the natural order Leguminosae, with axillary racemes of white apetalous flowers, long, broad, flat, many-seeded legumes, large, bipinnate leaves, leaflets oval, one inch long, and having dark fissured bark; on the flat stiff soil grew ironbark, apple-tree, and another species of Angophora, with long lanceolate leaves, seed vessels as large as the egg of a common fowl and a smooth yellow bark.

The plains, as we passed, were covered with the most luxuriant grass and herbage. Plants of the leguminosae and compositae, were by far the most prevalent; the colour of the former, generally a showy red, that of the latter, a bright yellow.

Thomson and Hooker that this is the case with the Butea parviflora, one of the Menispermaceae, and with some Dalbergias and other Leguminosae. This power would be necessary for any species which had to ascend by twining the large trees of a tropical forest; otherwise they would hardly ever be able to reach the light.

I could not but admire the various forms of the stately palm, the thickly-leaved balsam-yielding leguminosae, the luxuriant laurels, and the solaneae, with their numberless flowers of vast size.

In the polypetalous forms progression from hypogyny to epigyny is generally recognized, and where dorsiventrality with insect-pollination has been established, a dominant group has been developed as in the Leguminosae. The starting-point of the class, however, and the position within it of apetalous families with frequently unisexual flowers, have provoked much discussion.

Too much confidence, however, must not be placed in the proportional results, as the small collections brought home by some other naturalists though in some respects confirming the results, plainly show that much remains to be done in the botany of this group: the Leguminosae, moreover, has as yet been only approximately worked out: