80 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



of doing so direct from Swan River to London, except by 

 the vessels which take home the wool and oil, which are our 

 principal exports. In the collection I sent you there were 

 about 130 Proteacece, and I have since met with a iew addi- 

 tional species. Among them are two Hakceas with round 

 leaves belonginfj to Mr Brown's first section, and one with 

 sulcate leaves of nine or ten inches in length ; two Grevilleas, 

 one a various-leaved species : those on the barren branches 

 below ovate, acuminate, silvery above, 3-nerved and silvery 

 below; while those on the flowering branches are filiform, and 

 regularly sulcate: the flowers are produced on long branch- 

 ing racemes, and the old and empty seed-vessels, which re- 

 mained on the plant when I discovered it, were remarkable 

 for their small size and great length. I have found a Xylo- 

 melon on Ganjxan with lonji narrow willow-like leaves, which 

 must be distinct from Cunningham's X. salicifolia. The seed- 

 vessels are about an inch and a half long, and an inch broad ; 

 and the entire plants were about ten or twelve feet high ; the 

 full grown stems about two inches in diameter. I possess a 

 Dryandra with leaves about an inch broad, and three or four 

 inches long, with long serratures at the edge alternately turn- 

 ed up and down like the teeth of a wide set saw. Most of 

 the large genera of Proteacece appear to me to contain plants 

 that have little relationship to each other. In Dryandra, for 

 instance, the cuneate-leaved species, which grow to the size 

 of small trees, with naked receptacles, even the scales outside 

 of the collection of flowers, are deciduous before the seeds 

 are ripe; these seem to me to form a natural group. I am 

 aware that some botanists have made generaof theaphragmous 

 and diplophragmous species; but the form of the seed alone 

 will not divide these plants into natural genera. I have met 

 with seven aphragmous kinds, either species or varieties; six 

 of them may constitute a natural genus, but the seventh 

 (that which I described as having flowers like the Cape Honey- 

 bush,) has little relationship to the other aphragmous species, 

 or indeed to any other Dryandra I am acquainted with. Of 

 the Diplophragmas 1 have detected three species : D. bipin- 



