575 



which were noted for their magnitude, and were blown down in a storm, were lying by 

 the side of the road. These were called ' The Sisters ; ' they were nearly two hundred 

 feet in height."— p. 258. 



The author informs us he frequently took a walk before breakfast, 

 and explored the thickly wooded hills and valleys. On the borders 

 of the woods there was a great variety of beautifiil shrubs ; among 

 these is — 



" The slender jasmine, Jasminum gracile, known in England as a delicate green- 

 house plant. Here it climbs over the bushes, or with twisted stems, as thick as a man's 

 wrist, reaches the branches of lofty trees, at fifty feet from the ground, and climbs in 

 their heads. In these cases, it has probably grown up with the trees, the lower branch- 

 es of which have progressively died away, and left the wreathed stems of the jasmine 

 like ropes, hanging from the upper boughs. Scattered on the grassy hills is Hibiscus 

 or Lagunea Patersonii, which forms a spreading tree of forty feet in height : it is called 

 here the white oak: its leaves are of a whitish green, and its flowers pink, fading to 

 white, the size of a wine-glass. It is perhaps the largest plant known to exist, belong- 

 ing to the mallow tribe.* In a thick wood, I met with it eighty feet high, and with 

 a trunk sixteen and a half feet round." — p. 258. 



On the 28th of March James Backhouse, accompanied by the agri- 

 cultural superintendant, walked to a stock-station, called Cheeses 

 Gully, on the north side of the island. He here observed two re- 

 markable arches of rock, one of them connecting the columnar basalt 

 of the cliff with a little inaccessible' islet, inhabited by gannets and 

 tropic birds. He noticed many of the old timber roads, grown up 

 with the Cape goosebeny, Physalis edulis, — 



" Which produces abundance of pleasant, small, round fruit, in a bladder-like ca- 

 lyx. This is eaten by the prisoners, who also collect and cook the berries of the black 

 nightshade, Solanum nigrum. These berries are accounted virulently poisonous in 

 England, but their character may possibly be changed by the warmer climate of Nor- 

 folk Island. 



'' In the woody gullies, the Norfolk-Island cabbage-tree, Arecasapida, abouuds. 

 It is a handsome palm, with a trunk about twenty feet in height, and from one and a 

 half to two feet in circumference, green and smooth, wiih annular scars, left by the 

 fallen leaves. The leaves or fronds form a princely crest, at the top of this elegant 

 column ; they are pectinate, or formed like a feather, and are sometimes nineteen feet 

 in length ; they vary from nine to fifteen in number. The apex of the trunk is en- 

 closed in the sheathing bases of the leaf-stalks, along with the flower-buds, and young 

 leaves. When the leaves fall they discover double compressed sheaths, pointed at the 

 upper extremity, which split open indiscriminately, on the upper or under side, and 

 fall off, leaving a branched spadix, or flower-stem, which is the colour of ivory, and at- 

 tached by a broad base to the trunk. The flowers are produced upon this spadix : 

 they are veiy small, and are succeeded by round seeds, red externally, but white, and 



* Except the Baobab, PI ytol. 433.— Ed. 



