now used, we are told, as incense in the Roman Catholic 
churches of the colony. The “ Yellow Resin” is the product of 
X. Hastile, to which we refer our plant. This species is said to 
have been introduced in 1803, by Philip Gidley King, Esq., to 
the Royal Gardens, where it probably soon died. Other speci- 
mens and other species seem to have been imported, and shared 
the same fate. At length we received a healthy plant from Port 
Jackson, in 1845, through Mr. Kidd, then placed in temporary 
charge of the Botanic Garden of Sydney. This blossomed with 
us in the spring of 1853, while still, we apprehend, compara- 
tively a small plant, the whole height, including the scape and 
spike, being barely six feet. The scape alone in its native country 
attains a height of eighteen or twenty feet, and is used by the 
natives for making spears (whence the specific name Lastile) 
and fish-gigs, being pointed with the teeth of fish or other 
animals. 
Duscr. Caudex short, with us about six inches in height and 
eight in diameter, simple, clothed with the remains of fallen 
leaves, and bearing at the top a crown of dense, rather glaucous, 
grassy, crowded foliage. These Jeaves are three feet or more 
in length, very thickly inserted, and, from a very broad almost 
membranous base, become suddenly linear-subulate, recurved, 
harsh, and rigid, tapering to a very fine acuminated point ; they 
are longitudinally subtriangular, but thin and flat at the sides, 
so as to be somewhat ancipitate, the upper or inner face flat, 
and having an elevated longitudinal line: the edges are diapha- 
nous and scaberulous. Scape terminal, solitary, eighteen to 
twenty feet high (with us only five and a half), terete, firm, 
quite erect, bearing at the apex a dark-brown downy spike (very 
much resembling the head of the greater Reed-mace), from nine 
inches to a foot and a foot and a half long, cylindrical, obtuse, 
many times shorter than the scape. This spike consists of a 
vast quantity of scaly. dracts, linear, dilated at the apex, and 
there clothed with fuscous down, which give the colour to the 
spike. ‘The flowers are copious amongst these bracts, but ar- 
ranged spirally around the axis, sessile, small. Perianth in two 
series: outer of three erect sepals exactly resembling the bracts, 
and equally downy at the apex ; the inner of three oblong, emar- 
ginate and obscurely serrated, erect, white,.membranaceous ones. 
Stamens six, much exserted. Filaments long, subulate, spread- 
ing above the sepals, and forming white stars upon the dark- 
brown spike. Anthers oblong-globose, nearly white. Ovary 
obovate. Style cylindrical. Stigma obtuse. 
4. Hats oo accompanied by two bracteas. 2. Inner sepal. 3. Stamen. 
, a 7 3 3 
[all waguihed — section of the ovary. 6. Small portion of the leaf: 
