BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 311 
No. 130 is a most peculiar plant; its two seeds unite in the 
middle, where they are attached to the parent plant, and 
when they drop off in pairs, they present a striking resem- 
blance to an axle-tree, with two wheels, No. 106 is very 
curious, being a small and succulent tetrandrous plant, 
covering acres of the bottom of salt lakes when the water 
dries up. No. 114 resembles a small Myosotis, and has 
prickly seed-vessels. I am unable to ascertain its genus. 
The extent of our journey to the north-east was about 
fifty miles, we visited a hill, called by the Aborigines, Wangan 
Catta, one of the principal objects of my son and of Mr. Gil- 
bert, who went with us, being to obtain the eggs and see the 
nest of an extraordinary Gallinaceous bird which breeds there. 
The natives give it the name of nau; it raises large mounds 
of gravel, earth, ironstone and vegetable matter, wherein it 
deposits eggs, and leaves them to be hatched by the heat 
generated in the fermentation of the vegetable matter which 
the birds collect. We found four recent nests, but only 
procured five eggs, the season being rather too early. The 
bird is the size of domestic fowl, but its eggs are extremely 
large in proportion, weighing about half-a-pound each : it 
would be most desirable to introduce this creature into 
England. 
The Hakea, (No. 13), is very striking, it forms dense 
bushes, three or four feet high, and its strong coriaceous 
Prickly leaves and branches are so closely set, all round, that 
scarcely any thing can penetrate them: this species abounds 
in open flats, near the bed of a sort of brackish river, which, 
Sven at this early season of the year, is quite dried up in this 
inhospitable country. Em 
In the box you will find two or three curious Fungi ; one of 
them, found by my daughter, spreads by spawn underground 
like the common Mushroom. In a full-grown state, it is about 
the size of a musket-ball and quite round, when the sort of 
Outer covering with which it is furnished, expands into ten 
9r more very elegantly formed teeth, which, as they hc guard 
throw the plant above the surface of the ground ; there is an 
