Jg"^'] Barnard, Notes of a Visit to W.A. ^7 



amount of information not readily procurable elsewhere. Up 

 to the present no work dealing exclusively with the botany of 

 Western Australia has been published, but I have been 

 informed that Mr. Oswald Sargent, of York, is collecting 

 material for such a publication, which will no doubt be greatly 

 appreciated, for, as Mr. Maiden says regarding Western 

 Austraha, " its pre-eminence as a botanist's paradise is without 

 question." 



The natural history of Western Austraha has attracted the 

 attention of naturalists for more than two hundred years, for 

 had not Vlaming in 1696 visited the Swan River and captured 

 there actual specimens of the fabulous Black Swan of Juvenal, 

 and managed to take three of them ahve to Batavia. Three 

 years later WilHam Dampier visited Western Australia for the 

 second time, and, landing at Shark Bay, was disappointed 

 with the barren appearance of the country. He referred to 

 the kangaroo as " a strange creature like a raccoon, which used 

 only its hind legs, and, instead of walking, advanced by great 

 bounds or leaps of twelve or fifteen feet at a time." In 1791 

 Archibald Menzies, naturalist to Vancouver's expedition, spent 

 some time at King George's Sound making extensive botanical 

 collections. In the following year Mons. Labillardiere, 

 naturalist to the French expedition under D'Entrecasteaux, 

 visited the south-western coast, while in 1801 came Matthew 

 Flinders in the Investigator, and with him was Robert Brown, 

 the father of Austrahan botany, who made rich hauls in the 

 neighbourhood of King George's Sound. In 1801-2 another 

 French expedition under Baudin searched the west coast for 

 traces of La Perouse, without success. The botanist to this 

 expedition was Mons. Leschenault, after whom that beautiful 

 member of the Goodeniaceae was named, and which, so far 

 as I could learn, bears no vernacular name, being always 

 referred to by its scientific appellation. 



After my all too short acquaintance with the Swan River 

 flora, I could quite understand the pleasure and curiosity with 

 which early botanical explorers must have wandered about 

 the sandy surroundings of the Swan River and secured for 

 friends in England and elsewhere specimens of its wonderful 

 flora. Probably the man who did most to make Western 

 Austrahan plants known to the world was James Drummond, 

 who arrived in Western Australia as " agriculturist " with the 

 first Governor, Capt. Stirhng, 1829, and was placed in charge 

 of a garden for introducing useful plants into the colony. He 

 devoted a considerable portion of his time to collecting native 

 plants and forwarding specimen plants and seeds to England, 

 where they became quite a rage, and for years New Holland 

 plants, as they were termed, were grown in glass-houses by 



