A Research on the Pines of Australia

Abstract

THE joint authors of this book are both officers of the Technological Museum of New South Wales, acting in the botanical and chemical departments respectively, and also joint authors of a similar “research ” on the genus Eucalyptus, published some years ago. Beginning with the title of the present work, we question its appropriateness, though there may be local considerations which justify its adoption. To what extent the names “Moreton Bay Pine,” “Cypress Pine,” &c., are used, outside of books, is uncertain. Here, in the northern hemisphere, the term pine is by no means applied uniformly, but its use is restricted to the Abietaceae, no member of which is a native of Australia. A criticism of this kind is easily put forward, but it is difficult to find a more suitable and popular name, as the family designation, Coniferæ, is equally open to objection, in view of a classification based on relatively recent researches. Mr. Baker, however, might have consistently used the term Coniferae, inasmuch as he accepts and employs the classification and terminology of Bentham and Hooker'ss “Genera Plantarum,” In which the six groups, Cupressineæ, Taxodieæ, Taxeæ, Podocarpeæ, Araucarieæ, and Abietineæ are regarded as tribes of one family or natural order—the Coniferæ. All these groups, except the last, are represented in the indigenous vegetation of Australia, and eleven of the thirty-two genera described by Bentham and Hooker are in part, or wholly, Australian, with a total of thirty-seven species. Of these Araucaria and Agathis (Dammara) are the only genuine cone-bearing genera; the former being also represented by recent species in Brazil and Chili, and the latter is spread over the Malayan Archipelago and extends to New Zealand and some of the Pacific Islands.

A Research on the Pines of Australia.

By R. T. Baker H. G. Smith. (Technological Museum, N.S.W., Technical Education Series, No. 16.) Pp. xiv + 460. (Sydney: William A. Gullick, Government Printer, 1910.)