Ɛpsilon

WCP3546

Letter (WCP3546.3442)

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Wimborne.

June 6th 1910

Dear Mr. Deane1

I want to trouble you again. I have just received a copy of the fine "Flora of Queensland"2 (Bailey's3) from the Q. Government through the good offices of an old friend Skertchley,4 a Geologist and charming writer who has settled at Brisbane. That gives me no! enables me to get! the number of species (up to 1900) — which amounts to 4454 phanerogams, an increase of fmore than one-sixth over the number given at end of Müller's5 "Second Census" (1889.

[2] I should much like to have the figures for the Phanerogams for each of the Australian States up to date. I presume some of your Sydney botanists keep a record. Even Bailey's fine "Flora" gives no figures of totals, nor even enumerates the number of genera & species in each family Order, — so I have had to get at it by counting up the numbers of species (in Roman type) in the 224 columns of the general Index!

I have also Dixon's6 little "Plants of N. S. Wales"7 (1906), but [3] there too, are no figures whatever! and to count up all the species in rather obscure type, & irregularly placed in its 296 pages, is too great a labour & too great a risk of eye-inflammation, which I have three times in my life suffered from for months together.

But for S. Australia & West Australia Müller lumped the Tropical & Temperate floras together, which makes them almost useless for my purpose.

If any book or person has separated these, I shall be very glad of the figures. If not I shall be content with the figures for N. S. Wales & [4] Victoria.

Your paper8 on the flora of the "Parramatta Valley" gave me exactly the information I wanted, and the sequence of the Orders is very interesting, as it is the only purely temperate flora I know of in which the Orchids are first, and nearly doubles the Composites! I presume nearly all those orchids and most of the 178 N. S. Wales species are found in the Coastal district, east of the mountain ranges only.

Any information you can send me I shall be glad of as quickly as you can manage, as I want to finish my MSS. for press as soon as possible.

With best wishes | yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

1
Deane, Henry (1847-1924). British-born Australian engineer and scientist, son of chemist Henry Deane and Jemima Dean (née Elliott).
2
Bailey, Frederick Manson. 1899-1900. Contributions to the Flora of Queensland and New Guinea. (3 papers). Queensland Agricultural Journal, vol. 4.
3
Bailey, Frederick Manson (1827-1915). Australian colonial botanist.
4
Skertchly, Sydney Barber Josiah (1850-1926). British naturalist with interests in geology, ethnography, and historical anthropology.
5
Müller, Friedrich Max (1823-1900). German scholar of comparative language, religion, and mythology.
6
Dixon, William Adam (1841-1917). Scottish-born Australian chemist.
7
Dixon, Will A. 1906. The Plants of New South Wales: An Analytical to the Flowering Plants (except Grasses and Rushes) and Ferns of the State, Set Out in an Original Method, with an Up-to-date List of Native and Introduced Flora. Angus & Robertson.
8
Publication not found.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3546.3442)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Bevan, Deniz [2014-04-28] Transcription checked by Chua, Christine [2026-04-18]

Please cite as “WCP3546,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3546