4. Blake's small office more crowded than ever with specimens and reference material. Just a small hole on one table on which he works, and a clear spot on another for his microscope. His big work on the revision of Melaleuca was about ready for publication when field work in the Cooktown area a few months ago upset some of his conclusions. The widespread "M. leucadendron" is properly M. quinquenervia (N.S.W. through Queensland to New Guinea and New Caledonia). Blake has recently asked to be relieved of his undertaking to revise Scleria for Flora Malesiana; too busy with other work. One of his current projects is the revision of Plectranthus in the Australian and SW Pacific area, of which he has perhaps 8 or 10 species in cultivation. Blake critical of recent trends in Flora Malesiana. Some recent work reflects too closely the personality of van Steenis (editor in chief). A tendency to take the easy course and lump species. Not enough research in the literature. Blake referred specifically to some recent papers on the Sapotaceae by van Royen and others. The story is that for work financed by Flora Malesiana, van Steenis, operating on a short budget, sets a time limit. Kern, for example, is racing through the Cyperaceae. He is now doing Carex, as van Steenis considers Nelmes' (the recognized authority on the group) species concepts too narrow. Kern will also do Scleria. At the Queensland Museum in the afternoon and talked with Director George Mack and Chief Preparator Donald Vernon. Mack, as usual, very pleased with everything. Museum and offices in their usual spotless and speckless condition. Only recent field work has been digging for vertebrate fossils at Hughenden by Jack Woods. The small staff now busy with a Queensland Centenary exhibit to open early in June. Largely a photographic exhibit arranged on 21 2x5 ft. panels. An aborigine's culture exhibit (in panel form, produced by the Australian Museum in Sydney as a traveling show which reached Britain and the U.S.A.) will be put on in the larger towns of the North Coast as far as Cairns, after showing in Brisbane. Thursday, March 19. To Brisbane in afternoon to see Van who arrived by air from Sydney, and Everist at the Botanic Gardens, who came in from Townsville. Had very little time to talk with Everist, who had two other people waiting to see him. However, on L.M. Parry's request I talked with both Everist and Blake about the delay there has been in Brisbane in the identification of my Cape York Expedition plants of 1948, the Perry's wish for names so that the duplicates can be distributed before her retirement at the Arnold Arboretum in February next. Blake says most of the monocots have been determined. Everist made a fairly definite promise to get the job done, but he has promised before. At the Gardens to see me were Len Webb (formerly chemist, now ecologist with CSIRO), Bill Jones (plant collector for CSIRO) and Robert F. Thorne (Iowa State University). Webb's present work is in Queensland. Jones (a wizened bushman type whom I had not met before) expects to be sent to NE New Guinea later in the year to collect drug plants. Thorne, a big, friendly, youngish man (from Gulfport, Florida; Dartmouth '41) is at the Queensland University on a fullbright Grant and also has funds from N.S.F. Formerly Secretary, Plant Taxonomists Society. Interested in systematics and relationships of the higher plants, especially the primitive ( etc.). Hopes to visit both New Caledonia and New Guinea later this year.