36 



NOTES ON THE WEST AUSTRALIAN PITCHER- 

 PLANT (CEPHALOTUS FOLLICULARIS, LabillJ. 



By a. G. Hamilton. 



(Plates i.-ii.) 



This beautiful and extremely interesting pitcher-plant is found 

 only near Albany, West Australia. During a visit to Albany 

 in December, 1902, in company with Mr. C. R. P. Andrews, we 

 searched for the plants to the eastward of the town towards the 

 forts. We succeeded in finding a few stunted plants, and one 

 very fine one, in a little gully running down to the beach. They 

 srew amonoj the lonsj ojrass, almost in running water. This one 

 specimen was the largest and most beautifully coloured that I 

 saw. I then explored a heathy flat to the north-west of the 

 town, but could not find any, till Mr. Andrews most obliging^ 

 guided me to a spot where it was very plentiful — a creek running- 

 parallel to the rifle-range, to the north of the town. Some yards 

 away from the creek and on the western side, beyond the targets, 

 there was a sloping bank of peaty soil, which was kept very 

 sloppy by the soakage from the hill above, and here we found 

 many of the plants, growing in little rosettes, but in the open, 

 and on little elevations all round the bases of woody shrubs. 

 Even at the season when I was there, which was in the middle 

 of the dry time of the year, the ground was very wet. In the 

 wet season it must be almost a running stream. 



Judging from what I have read, and also heard from competent 

 observers, of the plentifulness of the plants in former years, I 

 think that in the locality I visited they are on the way to become 

 extinct — the cause, so far as I could judge, being the trampling 

 of stock feeding on the common. I had not the time to go 

 farther afield, and so do not know if it is holding its own farther 



