emarks in this notice, on certain plants of established natural
families, that have been discovered in the progress of these voyages;
closing this paper with some observations, chiefly illustrative of the
geographical diffusion of several Australian plants known to authors,
whose localities have hitherto been exceedingly limited.

PALMAE. On considering the vast expanse of the continent of Terra
Australis, and that great extent of coast which passes through climates
favourable for the production of certain genera of this remarkable
natural family, it is singular that so few of the order should have been
discovered: a fact in the history of the Australian vegetation, which
(upon contemplating the natural economy of many other genera of plants)
can only be considered as accounted for, by the great tendency to drought
of at least three-fifths of its shores.

To Corypha, Seaforthia, and Livistona, the only three genera that have
been enumerated in the productions of the Australian Flora, may now be
added Calamus; of which a species (discovered without fructification, by
Sir Joseph Banks, during the celebrated voyage of Captain Cook) has at
length been detected bearing fruit in the vicinity of Endeavour River.
The existence of this palm, or rattan, on the East Coast, to which it is
confined, seems almost to be limited to an area within the parallels of
15 and 17 degrees South; should, however, its range be more extensive, it
is southerly one or two degrees, in which direction a remarkable primary
granitic formation of the coast continues, throughout the whole
neighbourhood of which is a peculiar density of dark moist forest,
seemingly dependent on it, and evidently indispensable to the life of
this species of Calamus; but at the termination of this geological
structure, it most probably ceases to exist. A dioecious palm of low
stature, and in habit similar to Seaforthia, was detected in the shaded
forests investing the River Hastings, in latitude 31 degrees South,
bearing male flowers; but as it may prove to be a dwarf state of a
species of that genus, which has lately been observed, with all its
tropical habits, in a higher latitude, it cannot now be recognised as a
sixth individual of the family whose fructification has been seen.

Although this order has been observed to be sparingly scattered along the
line of East Coast almost to the thirty-fifth degree of south latitude,
its range on the opposite shores of the contine