184 NOTES ON PLANTS INDIGENOUS TO SYDNEY, 



united in an oblique or slightly incurved tube round the style. 

 Ovary two celled. Stigma broadly two lobed and often surrounded 

 by a ring of retractile hairs. Capsule opening loculicidally within 

 the calyx lobes in two valves : rarely splitting longitudinally below 

 the calyx lobes also. Herbs, often acrid with a milky juice. The 

 Australian ones either annual, or creeping and rooting at the base. 

 Pedicels one flowered, either axillary or terminal, or in terminal 

 racemes, sometimes having two small bracteoles, which however, 

 are never constant in the same species. Flowers in a few species 

 dioecious by the abortion or sterility of the anthers in the females, 

 and the malformation of the undivided stigma, and abortion of the 

 ovules in the males." I have been fortunate this season, in being 

 able to examine and study a great number of Lobelias. On the 

 mountains, at least as far as Springwood, as well as on the coast, 

 they have been unusually plentiful. Those on the coast I have found 

 chiefly at Curl Curl, which is the next bay north of Manly. 

 Perhaps I may be allowed to digress here, just to say, for the 

 benefit of other botanists that, leaving Manly by the Pitt water 

 road, and after a walk of about a mile, turning to the right up a 

 steep rough hill road, known in the locality as Rose Hill, follow- 

 ing from the top of the hill, the fence running east to the ocean, 

 then along the beach to a creek flowing into the sea, along the 

 winding of the creek back to the Pittwater road, and thence to 

 the point of starting ; the boundaries of a piece of country will 

 be traversed of between three and four square miles in extent ; 

 very rich indeed in specimens of our coast flora. Here, in their 

 respective seasons, may be found Utricularia, Xyris, four or five 

 different species of Boronia, Blandfordia, Goodenias, and a vast 

 number of other plants of great interest to the botanist. Of the 

 Lobelias, I have found in this locality, during the present summer 

 L. anceps, L. gracilis, L. gibosa, and L. debilis (of the last how- 

 ever only one plant). From my notes of these, as well as of 

 those examined in the mountains, especially with regard to their 

 fertilization, I find the same process going on in all. Taking a 

 flower of which the corolla has recently opened, the filaments of 

 the stamens can be seen open and separated from each other at 



