[4] Following the advent of the Crown Lands Act of 1884 part of his duty was to analyse and consider the future roles of his department and ironically that analysis resulted in a number of retrenchments including his own.

Coupled with his skills as a taxidermist he initially (during 1855–56) contributed a number of articles on the birds of his hometown Kerry to that town's magazine.

[4] More specifically FitzGerald had an enormous interest in botany and in 1864 he travelled to Wallis Lake, north of Newcastle in New South Wales to collect ferns and orchids which he intended to cultivate around his Hunters Hill home.

The exquisite lithograph plates detailing FitzGerald's dissections of orchids, were hand-coloured by artists following his samples and instructions.

Fitzgerald was encouraged by the government of the day, who covered his costs and published his work, but the author died before the task was completed and nearly one hundred of his unpublished drawings are held in the State Library of New South Wales.

No attempt was made to follow any system of classification and the plates and pages were not numbered, making it difficult for readers to find a particular drawing.