Oxford, the greater part of the plants brought from Shark's Bay by the celebrated navigator Dampier, and have seen a few additional species from that and other parts of the West Coast of New Holland, collected in the voyage of Captain Baudin.
The additional species obtained from all these collections are upwards of 300; my materials, therefore, for the commencement of a Flora of Terra Australis amount to about 4200 species; a small number certainly for a country nearly equal in size to the whole of Europe, but not inconsiderable for the detached portions of its shores hitherto examined.
In Persoon's Synopsis, the latest general work on phænogamous plants, their number is nearly 21,000. The cryptogamous plants already published, by various authors, exceed 6000; and if to these be added the phænogamous plants that have appeared in different works since the publication of Persoon's Synopsis, and the unpublished species of both classes already existing in the collections of Europe, the number of plants at present known may be estimated at 33,000, even exclusive of those peculiar to Terra Australis.
The observations in the present essay being chiefly on extensive tribes of plants, they are necessarily arranged [537 according to the natural method.
Of this method the primary classes are Dicotyledones, Monocotyledones, and Acotyledones.
These three divisions may be admitted as truly natural, and their names, though liable to some exceptions, appear to me the least objectionable of any hitherto proposed.
Of the Australian plants at present known, upwards of 2900 are Dicotyledonous; 860 Monocotyledonous; and 400 Acotyledonous, Ferns being considered as such.
It is well known that Dicotyledonous plants greatly exceed Monocotyledonous in number; I am not however aware that the relative proportions of these two primary divisions have anywhere been given, or that it has been inquired how far they depend on climate. Into this subject I can enter only very generally in the present essay.
