316 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
would occupy too much time and paper were I to attempt enumerating 
all the individuals of the genus Banksia which I found during my last 
excursion. One only I must particularize: it had very large flowers 
varying in eolour from pale pink to rose, and setaceous, glaucous leaves. 
I am delighted to hear that the Royal Gardens are prospering, and 
that some of our Swan-river productions are thriving at Kew. While 
I lived in England, I used often to remark that Australian plants sel- 
dom looked well after the second or third year ; and since I have 
resided among them, the reason has occurred to me, which is, that 
they ought to be cut down close to the ground when they begin to 
get ragged ; and that the pruning-knife and a mixture of wood-ashes 
in the soil would probably prove an effectual substitute for the trien- 
nial burnings to which they are subjected at home. Some of our 
shrubs never bloom in perfection till the season after the ground is 
burnt over. Among these is the Nuytsia floribunda, which looks like 
a blackened leafless trunk after a good bush-fire, but is covered the 
next year with one mass of orange flowers. 
During my late journey to the south, I gathered a most exquisite 
Stylidium in flower. For several years I had observed its foliage ; but 
a careful examination of the plant in various situations leads me to 
the conclusion that the inflorescence is never produced in perfection, 
except on the second year after the ground has been cleared by fire. 
The leaves, which shoot up very beautifully, become hard and rigid in 
the course of two or three years, and seem incapable of supplying the 
nutriment necessary to enable the plant to form its flowers and to 
mature its seeds. I have named it S. elegans: its roots are thick and 
fibrous; the leaves 18 inches long, lanceolate, smooth, and silky ; the 
flowers are rose-coloured, and borne on stalks from a foot and a half to 
two feet high: on the whole, I consider it the finest species of the genus. 
I am sorry to say, none of the hills in this colony are of sufficient 
height to produce alpine plants. While we were encamped at the 
foot of the Prorongarup range, I often observed the mist resting on 
their summits; but the sole indication of increased moisture that I 
could find consisted in the size of the foliage of a fine yellow-flowered 
Villarsia, of which I saw some measuring a. foot across, being the 
largest leaf I ever beheld in Australia. I gathered specimens of it on 
the Christmas day of 1843, among the crevices of that pile of granite 
rocks on the summit of the hills, to which the name of Stirling Castle 
