BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 265 
Mangles, thus introducing them to England. I am sorry to 
tell you that I have just heard of her decease, in the prime of 
life. This melancholy event frustrates the hopes I had enter- 
tained of her transmitting to you a particular account of the 
plants in her neighbourhood, which she had purposed doing ; 
but Providence has willed it otherwise. 
We have a most curious little plant, now in blossom, which 
I suspect to belong to Cyperacee, but cannot refer it satis- 
factorily to any of Mr. Brown's genera. It covers a larger 
portion of the virgin pastures in Australia than perhaps any 
other production whatever, being equally abundant on clay, 
sand, and loam, and growing wherever there is grass, except 
on the alluvial flats. It springs up in dense patches, from 
one or two inches to as many yards in diameter, the larger 
clumps having, no doubt, taken ages to acquire such a size. 
To me its affinity seems between the Cyperacee and the true 
grasses ; the leaves are grass-like, and about four inches high, 
somewhat hispid, and having broad, membranaceous, sheath- 
ing bases, which inclose the young shoots and the flower- 
stalk, itself about half an inch high. Immediately below the 
flowers are three bracteas, analogous to the involucral leaves 
ofthe Cyperus, and above these are five or six glumaceous 
bracteas, of a green colour on the back, but their edges are 
White and membranous, sometimes tinged with purple; in 
each of these bracteas there is a germen, crowned with a style 
about three-quarters of an inch long, white or rose-coloured, 
villous, and cleft nearly half-way down into three or four 
parts; the anthers are three or four in number, two lines 
long, and borne on filaments measuring an inch in length. 
This little plant, as you will perceive by the specimens sent 
home, is individually quite inconspicuous, and yet it is very 
remarkable, for in some cases, when in a flowering state, 
the anthers are so numerous as completely to hide the leaves, 
giving its tufts the appearance of golden cushions." 
September 25th, 1843. 
“ I have now the pleasure of sending a box of seeds for the 
