550 



were lying on the ground, and in various stages of decay. Smaller trees, called here 

 honeysuckle, she oak, cherry-tree, and wattle, were interspersed among the others, and 

 the ground was decorated with lieptospermum scoparium, Corra;a virens, Indigofera 

 australis, and Epacris impressa ; the last of which resembles heath, with white, pink, 

 or crimson flowers. The trees in this country often bear the name of others belonging 

 to the northern heinisi)here. Thus the honeysuckle of the Australian regions is gene- 

 rally some species of Banksia, often resembling a fir in growth, but having foliage more 

 like a holly ; and the cherry-tree is an Exocarpos — a leafless, green, cypress-like bush, 

 with small red or white fruit, bearing the stone outside ! '' — p. 22. 



Speaking of introduced plaiits the author observes that the climate 

 at Hobart town is too cold for grapes and cucumbers, but that apples, 

 pears, quinces, mulberries and walnuts succeed better than in 

 England. On the basaltic hills about Hamilton, the prevailing 

 tree is the oak — Casuarina quadrivalvis. " It seldom grows in 

 contact: its trunk is about 10 feet high and 5 feet round; its head is 

 spherical, and 10 or 15 feet in diameter, and consisting of pendulous, 

 leafless, green, jointed twigs, resembling horse-tail weed." At Mount 

 Wellington, Acacia Oxycedrus, 10 feet high, was in flower. " This, 

 along with numerous shrubs of other kinds, formed impervious thick- 

 ets in some places, while, in others, Epacris impressa displayed its 

 brilliant blossoms of crimson and rose-colour." We pass on to the de- 

 scription of a fern valley, which is almost enough to make a botanist 

 emigrate to this distant land. In the plate accompanying this sketch 

 the author is seen crossing the stream on the trunk of a fallen Euca- 

 lyptus ; how we long to be his companion ! Loddiges and Ward, 

 what would you not give to realize such a scene ! 



"The brook that supplies Hobart Town with water, flows from Mount Wellington 

 through a valley at the foot of the mountain. Here the bed of the brook is rocky, and 

 so nearly flat as scarcely to deserve the name of The Cascades, by which this place is 

 called. Many dead trees and branches lie across the brook, by the sides of which 

 grows Drymophila cyanocarpa — a plant allied to Solomon's seal, producing sky-blue 

 berries on an elegantly three-branched nodding top. Diauella caerulea — a sedgy plant 

 — flourishes on the drier slopes: this, as well as Billardiera longiflora — a climbing 

 shrub, that entwines itself among the bushes — was now exhibiting its violet-coloured 

 fruit. In damp places by the side of the brook, a princely tree-fern, Cybotium Billar- 

 dieri, emerged through the surrounding foliage. A multitude of other ferns, of large 

 and small size, enriched the rocky margins of the stream, which I crossed upon the 

 trunk of one of the prostrate giants of the forest, a gum-tree of large dimensions, which 

 had been uprooted by some blast from the mountain ; and in its fall had subdued ma- 

 ny of the neighbouring bushes, and made a way where otherwise the forest would have 

 been inaccessible. On descending from this natural bridge, to examine a tree-fern, I 

 found myself at the foot of one of their trunks, which was about five leet in circumfe- 

 rence and ten feet in height. The lower part was a mass of protruding roots, and the 

 upper part clothed with short remains of loaf-stalks, looking rough and blackened : 

 this was surmounted by dead leaves hanging down, and nearly obscuring the trunk 



