intertropical regions, is not any approach to the winter of count 
the lemnnesoie Penien, Hn lon of tes BE te Reghey labbadel ae tenner 
any material difference of atmospheric temperature at opposite periods of the 
year, but (we are speaking of the climate of the sea coast) is due to that . 
periodical, well-defined break-up, from great dedug tt to extreme humidity, 
commonly called the dry and rainy seasons. With such perfect regula- 
rity do these changes of season take place on the N. W. coast, that our frienc 
Capt. P. Rina 
tries within 
N., who was employed, during nearly five years on its 
survey, could look forward almost to the very day when the break-up of the 
easterly monsoon, and with it the period of drought, would oblige him 
perernperyy to stand off shore, and immediately to quit the oie “wis 
uring the existence of that monsoon, which prevails between May and 
October, when the wind blows steadily off shore, that portions of that survey 
were annually conducted, and the Botanist of the voyage, although he landed 
almost daily from the vessel to pursue his researches, ’twas oftentimes but to 
behold vegetable life in a state of extreme langour, by the aridity of the 
atmosphere, and its uniformly high fervid temperature. FO) IE 
The GRAMINE4, and, indeed, herbaceous plants generally, had suffered 
in the early part of the season : these were all burnt up, and the more woody 
vegetables, the shrubs, arbuscule, and stunted timber trees bore the marked 
evidences of participation in the general distress. None were detected in a 
flowering state, whilst all were laden with their ripened fruits. The AcCAcrIAs, 
of which every sandy beach and rocky islet furnished some species, bore 
their clustered pods on branches, in many species incrusted with a 
brittle concrete matter, that had exuded through the cuticle, which a 
peared by thus covering the bark, the phyllodia, and buds, to suspend 
a time, the operation of their respective functions, and thus lull vegeta 
life into a state of quiescence. All nature wore an air of desolation, and the 
vegetable world assumed an aspect unusually gray and gloomy. But it was 
its season of rest—that period of repose which appears essential to vegetation 
generally in tropical countries, to enable it upon the return of the rains, to 
burst forth with a renovated strength into fresh life, and undergo with vigour 
that sudden and prodigious development of leaves and flowers, which con- 
stitutes the beauty and grandeur of the vegetables of warm countries. 
During the surveys of Capt. K1nG just noticed, the seeds of no less than 
twelve species of Proteaceous plants, (and chiefly of Mr, Brown’s last 
section of the Genus GREVILLEA,) were received at Kew. Plants of each 
were readily raised, which afterwards, with the treatment they received, grew 
to the stature of large shrubs, and some eventually flowered, to the admira- 
tion of all yisitors. But these goodly plants were not destined to long life in 
the King’s gardens, for, inattentive to the conditions under which alone, those 
lovelier forms of Australian vegetation exist on their native coasts, they were 
urged immediately after flowering, into a new and unnatural vigorous growth. 
In vain they looked for some short season of rest, by perhaps a dryer 
warmth, with but the slightest possible watering afforded, to sustain life—a 
treatment, to which their constitutions, inherited from their parents, ap- 
peared so fully adapted. They found none; but debility resulting from 
forced culture, was followed by extreme exhaustion, and death closed the 
scene! But we have yet to discover, in our future endeavours to cultivate 
the shrubby vegetables of the sands of the intertropical shores of that vast 
country, by what mode of treatment, plants delighting in a high atmospheric 
temperature, and subject to the extremes of drought and humidity at oppo- 
site periods of the year, can possibly be cultivated in Britain. It is to be 
hoped that our government may, ere long, be induced to re-establish settle- 
ments on the northern coasts of New Holland, whence the seeds of those 
beautiful plants, to which we have particularly referred, may be again 
obtained, and other methods of culture tried, in which their native habits 
should 
