314 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
some slices of it over our fire, with a portion of the leathery covering 
of its pileus. Soon the Skepherd’s Purse of our native land will be 
equally common in Australia. Many species allied to Lepidium grow 
here; but I find that others, which from their similarity to Subularia 
aquatica I had referred to Crucifere, belong in reality to entirely dif- 
ferent families; and, again, my supposed Ranunculacee have proved, 
by the help of the microscope you sent me, to be Umbellifere. 1 trust 
to avoid such blunders in future, now that I need no longer trust to 
the naked eye, and my sight is not so aeute as once it was. Mes 
We have a curious little plant in this country, nearly allied to Di- 
chondra repens of Brown, if not the same ; it has long puzzled me, but 
I have at last discovered that the flowers are subterranean, in at least 
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. This underground inflorescence, 
which never sees the light, yet perfects its seeds in abundance. Thè. 
plant is common on the banks of all our rivers, from the Swan to King 
George's Sound. You will be pleased with the three little Composite 
I sent you: one seems to have solitary flowers, or perhaps you will 
consider the whole plant a flower. Another bright yellow-blossomed 
little fellow, with curious connate yellow perichzetial leaves, is a novelty 
io me in this Order. 
I hope you have ere now received specimens, enclosed in a recent 
letter, of our beautiful little Swan River Phascum, allied to P. serratum. 
I shall put into this letter a singular little seaweed, like an Ophioglos- - 
sum : it grows in crevices of rocks on the beach, and is exposed at low 
water. : í 
The natives talk much of the scarlet-flowered Banksia, resembling 
but excelling B. grandis, which inhabits the country to the east. My 
only way to obtain it would be to go from the Wangan Hills on foot, - 
during the wet season, for in the district it inhabits there is no grass 
for the subsistence of horses. : 
During our journey, my son got five or six specimens of the War- 
rong, a curious small kangaroo, with a nail at the end of its tail, but 
distinet from the species described by Gould as having this appendage- 
. He also procured half-a-dozen specimens of the native Marmine, à 
beautiful little kangaroo, striated crosswise with dark and light grey, 
and the fur tipped with long silvery hairs, both male and female indi- 
viduals. Of the Hphema splendens we saw six or seven pairs, but only 
succeeded in shooting one young cock-bird, nearly full-grown : it is 
