I 



1915] on the Visit of the British Association to Australia 353 



Though fortunate in many ways, Australia is a country sore 

 afflicted by foreign weeds ; in fact, we constantly come across familiar 

 wild plants. Cape weed greeted us in West Australia ; and a yellow 

 Oxalis, also from the Cape of Good Hope, a well-known MediteiTa- 

 nean pest, occupied a prominent place in the landscape near Adelaide, 

 growing as it did in great sheets in the almond orchards, which are 

 a feature of the district ; the brilliant green foliage and yellow flower 

 of the weed formed a carpet in striking contrast with the pink flower 

 of the trees growing out of it. In Queensland, we were struck by 

 the extraordinary development attained to by Lantana {L. camara), 

 chiefly the yellow form, which seemed to take the place the black- 

 berry does here, growing luxuriantly as a big bush everywhere at the 

 sides of clearings. I afterwards came across it in Java, Ceylon and 



Fig. 14. — Almond Grove in Blossom. 



India. Here we know it only as a half-hardy plant, which flowers 

 but scarcely grows, in the open during summer. But the great pest 

 of Eastern Australia is the prickly pear. It is said this was first 

 planted out at a station in Queensland forty-five years ago and that 

 forty-three years ago a man was discharged for not watering it ; 

 now there are about 2,500,000 acres of pear-infested country in 

 Xew South Wales and the cost of eradicating it was put, two years 

 ago, at ten or twelve millions sterling. It is stated that in Queens- 

 land 30,000,000 acres are affected and that the spread is 1,000,000 

 acres per year. It is carried further afield by birds and stock, which 

 eat the seeds ; as every joint, or portion of one, which drops off, 

 forms a new plant, it must be killed entirely if it is to be got 

 rid of. It flourishes most luxuriantly under the partial shade of the 

 stunted forest trees which form the scrub over the dry lands. The 

 Queensland Government have established a special experimental 

 station to study methods of destroying the pear at Dulacca, on the 



