34 CASUARINAS OR SHEOAKS. 
roundish, opening with three pores. Ovary sessile, with two ovules. 
Style slender. Stigma hemispheric. Fruit oval or roundish, 
4-1 of an inch long, densely beset by minute and partly hooked 
prickles and asperities, indehiscent, beaked by the style. Seeds 
ripening one or two, without any appendage. Embryo surrounded 
by albumen. Cotyledons oval, plane-convex; radicle divergent, 
almost cylindrical. 
On the Murray-River and its lower tributaries. 
III—THE CASUARINAS OR SHEOAKS. © 
THE scientific name of these well-known plants is as appropriate 
as their vernacular appellation is odd and unsuited. The former 
alludes to the Cassowary (Casuarius), the plumage of which is 
comparatively as much reduced among birds, as the foliage of the 
Casuarinas is stringy among trees. Hence more than two centuries 
ago Rumph already bestowed the name Casuarina on a Java- 
species, led by the Dutch colonists, who call it there the Casuaris- 
Boom. The Australian vernacular name seems to have arisen 
from some fancied resemblance of the wood of some Casuarinas to 
that of Oaks, notwithstanding the extreme difference of the foliage 
and fruit ; unless, as Dr. Hooker supposes, the popular name of 
these trees and shrubs arose from the Canadian “ Sheack.” 
Here in Victoria only a few species concern us, although repre- 
sentatives of the genus are dispersed from Hast-Africa to South- 
Asia, Polynesia and Tasmania. The main-characters of the 
genus, which is as far as hitherto known the only one of its order 
(Casuarinez), are as follows: Staminate flowers in spikes, with 
one or two sepals ; pistillate flowers in tufts, without any calyx. 
Stamen solitary ; anthers consisting of two partitions, slit along 
the margin. Ovary one-celled, with two ovules. Stigmas two, 
threadlike, acute. Fruit (somewhat resembling a pine-cone) 
