THE BOTANY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 117 
repeatedly branched in the form of a stag's horn, grows on Mount 
Lesueur and other hills of Gardener's Range; the flowers were past in 
September; the seed-vessels found on the plant were like those of 
Daviesia, but larger than they usually occur in the genus. Two fine 
species of Spherolobium, one with orange-red flowers, larger than those 
of S. grandiflorum, and a small species with beautiful purple flowers, 
grow on the ironstone hills to the north of Dundaragan. The York 
gum forests, on the high ground to the east of the Hill River, produce 
a narrow-leaved Gastrolobium, which bears a considerable resemblance 
to the plant called ** Wall's Poison," growing near York, and I fear it 
too closely resembles that plant in its properties ; it is however a dis- 
tinet species, being altogether a smaller plant, with much smaller: 
flowers. Another new Gastrolobium, which comes nearer G. ilicifolium 
than any described species, is found on the top of the ironstone hill half 
a mile to the east of Colbourn springs; the leaves have fewer and 
deeper divisions and the sinuses are armed with curious recurved 
prickles. Mirbelia pulchella, an elegant little plant, with bright blue 
flowers, which sometimes vary to white, grows abundantly on the iron- 
stone hills to the north of Dundaragan. Two new species of Hovee, 
one nearly allied to H. pungens, but the leaves are only about half the 
length, and much broader towards their footstalks, I saw on the top of 
the ironstone hills to the east and west of the Colbourn springs; and 
another species with linear hairy leaves (all the known species of the 
genus have blue or purple flowers) on the ironstone hills near where 
the road approaches the first tributary of the Hill River. 
I met with a beautiful purple-flowered, sweet-scented Lotws, first on 
the banks of the Irwin, and afterwards in much greater abundance by 
a spring near Mount Hill; here the plants covered several acres, grow- 
ing as close together and as luxuriantly as a cultivated bed of lucerne ; 
it is an herbaceous. plant, much resembling some of the larger varieties 
of L. corniculatus. The purple Lotus is a favourite food of sheep, 
cattle, and horses. The banks of the Greenough and Irwin rivers pro- 
duce a new genus, allied to Zrifolium and Melilotus ; it is an annual 
plant, a foot or eighteen inches in height, the leaves are the size and 
shape of the common red clover, the flowers are sessile, borne in clus- 
ters in the axils of the leaves; they are of a yellow colour, and have a — 
strong scent of the officinal Me/ilot when dried ; the seed-vessels are 
flat pods about an inch long, opening at both sides to discharge the 
