i 
172 AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION. 
Murray and Darling Desert. A fern-palm (Zamia Fraseri) attains in 
West Australia a height of fifteen feet. It is there, like some con- 
geners of America and South Africa, occasionally sacrificed for the 
manufacture of a peculiar starch, though the export of the stems (and 
perhaps of those of the Xanthorrhceas also) would prove much more 
profitable, inasmuch as these, when deprived of their noble crown of 
leaves, though not of their roots, will endure a passage of many months, 
even should the plants be half a century old. Such specimens any wool- 
vessel might commodiously take to Europe. This alimentary fern- 
palm, well appreciated by the aborigines for the sake of its nuts, to- 
gether with a true kind of yam (Dioscorea hastifolia), the only plant 
oil which the natives in their pristine state anywhere in Australia be- 
stowed a crude cultivation, are with species of Borya, Sowerbm, 
Hamodorum, Ricinocarpus, Macarthuria, Chloanthes, Aphanopetaluiv 
Xylomelum, Caleana, Calectasia, Fetrophila, Leschenaultia , Fseudan- 
thus, Nematolepis, Nuytsia (the terrestrial mistletoe), Leucolmia, Com- 
mersonia, Rulingia, Keraudrenia, Mirbelia, Gastrolobium, Labichea, 
llelickrus, Monotaxis, Actinotus, and Stypandra, remarkable for their 
geographical distribution ; because, as far as we are hitherto aware, 
these West Australian genera have no representatives in the wide in- 
terjacent space until we approach towards the eastern, or, in a few 
instances, to the rorthern regions of Australia, Zamia alone having 
been noticed in South Australia {Zamia Macdonnellit) , but there as an 
exceedingly local plant. Neither climatic nor geologic considerations 
explain this curious fact of phytogeography. Over some of the heathy 
tracts of scrub-country towards the south-west coast poisonous specie 
of Gastrolobium, (G. bilobum, G. oxylobioides, G. calycinum, G. colli- 
stachys,) are dispersed. These plants have in some localities rendered 
the occupation of country for pastoral pursuits impossible ; but these 
poison-plants are mostly confined to barren spots, and it is not un- 
likely that by repeated burnings, and by the raising of perennia 
fodder-plants, they coald be suppressed and finally extirpated. *° r " 
tunately Gastrolobium occurs in no other parts of Australia, except 
the inland tract from Attack Creek to the Suttor River, where flocks 
must be guarded against access to the scrub-patches harbouring 
only tropical species (Gastrolobium grandiflorum). The deadly efiec 
occasionally produced by Lotus Australia — a herb with us of very in 
distribution, and extending also to New Caledonia,— and the cerebra 
on 
