213 BOTANY OF CAPE RICHE. 



shaped fruits. This place is about eighty miles by the road from the 

 Sound, yet this is a three days' journey as travelled. I walked the 

 greater part of the way, though entitled to a seat on a cart, because it 

 gave me the opportunity of picking up the few plants still in flower. 

 The road is through a very barren, and not interesting country, the soil 

 chiefly ironstone (which is good for plants), with here and there sandy 

 or boggy patches. About half-way we cross the Calgan river, now re- 

 duced to deep water-holes. Lambertia inermis was very common for 

 the latter half of the way, and very beautiful, old and young shrubs 

 alike covered with flowers. Some of the larger specimens were thirty 

 feet high, with very stout stems. I also saw Z. tmifiora, twenty feet 

 high, and very woody. Beaufortia animndra (said to be *rare' by 

 Preiss) was exceedingly abundant the whole road, and is equally com- 

 mon here. It always reminds me of Sir Prancis B., because I remem- 

 ber your telling me that he likes a plant to have a bad smell rather 

 than none at all ; and this namesake of his would surely please him, 

 for it has an awful stench. I shall try and get seeds of it, however, 

 for it is well worth introducing, on account of the very remarkable 

 colour (lurid blackish -purple) of the flowers. But I find it no easy 

 matter to secure good seeds of the smaller Myrtacem, Some of them 

 would be great favourites at home : the purple Terticordias and Caly- 

 cotJirices are very charming, and so especially is a little Hypocalymma, 

 very common at the Sound ; but the oddity of all is Actinodium (or 

 Tryphalia^ E. B.), which, to a passing observer, is precisely like a double 

 daisy. It is very abundant in boggy places near Albany. The most 

 striking vegetable productions along the road are, out of all compari- 

 son, the Kingias, which, when old, and in places not subject to frequent 

 bush-fires, are extremely noble-looking objects, and at the same time 

 grotesque. The old leaves of several years appear to hang on, when 

 not burned off, as is usually the case, and at last are many times the 

 mass of the young leaves, reflexed, and forming a complete cloak to the 

 stem. The young foliage is beautifully silvery, glittering in the sun as 

 it waves to and fro in the wind ; the decayed leaves a light tawny, the 

 trunk generally black. Fancy, then, a hill-side clothed with small 

 shrubs, and dotted over with fifty or a hundred Kingm of all ages. 

 Some of the older ones are branched, which does not improve their ap- 

 pearance. The Grass-trees are far less beautiful, seldom so tall, and 

 with much thicker stems and stiffer leaves. How often I wish I could 



