140 THE BOTANY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 
M. erubescens, but without the sweet scent of that species, appears on 
the Chapman. I also found a curious creeper, with narrow linear op- 
posite leaves, and flowers of four sepals, resembling a small Clematis ; 
the flowers have eight anthers, which grow in a circle round the germen, 
which terminates in two styles, and contains two ovules; the sepals are 
permanent, and become wings for dispersing the seeds; this plant first 
appears in the crevices of the limestone roeks on the west side of the 
largest of the lakes, and it grows among bushes in calcareous soil, in 
. many parts of the Champion Bay district. 
The highlands near the Murchison afford a curious tree, which 1 
think belongs to the Maple family (Sterculia? Ed.): it grows about 
twenty fect in height, having a trunk about one foot in diameter, and 
about ten or twelve feet high, with a smooth, thick, and very tough bark ; 
the branches are numerous, spreading regularly into a compact hemi- 
spherical head ; the leaves are palmate, about the size and not unlike in 
shape to those of the Sugar Maple; the flowers are borne in branching 
racemes at the ends of the branches, they are white, large, and showier 
than the flowers of Maple; the males and females are distinct, but grow 
mixed together on the same racemes. I have not yet seen the seed- 
vessels of this tree, which is deciduous, but in a very curious way: at 
the time I saw it, some of the trees were in full foliage and fast burst- 
ing into flower; others were leafless, the leaves newly fallen off and 
lying under the trees; others just bursting into leaf, with foliage of a beau- 
tiful light green colour; to all appearance it would seem a tree which 
would be altogether unable to resist the winds, which blow constantly in 
this district in the dry season with such force as to beud and almost 
annihilate the stubborn Gums, but from some unknown cause they are 
unable to bend a branch or injure a leaf of this beautiful tree, which . 
often grows on the ridges of the hills, as it were in defiance of them. 
Two new species of Diplopeltis grow in the Champion Bay district : 
one, with clammy curled leaves about three inches long by half an inch 
in breadth, bears little resemblance, except in its flowers and seed- 
vessels, to any of our Swan River kinds; the other species has oval, 
entire, smooth, green leaves, and similar seed-vessels; the flowers I 
have not yet seen. 
The sand-plains to the north of Dundaragan produce a fine shrub be- 
longing to Byttneriacee and to the Pleiocarpee division of the Order, near 
Sringia; it is a shrub about six or eight feet high, repeatedly branched, 
