EUCALYPTUS TREES. 149 
yielding half its weight in dye. Fiber of great excel- 
lence and strength is obtained from the bark of Pim- 
elea clavata, a bush widely distributed there. It 
resembles that of bast from Pimelea axiflora in Gipps 
Land, and that from Pimelea microcephala of the Mur- 
ray and Darling desert. A Fern-palm (Zamia Fraseri) 
attains in West Australia a height of fifteen feet. It 
is there, like some congeners 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 
any wool-vessel might commodiously take to Europe. 
This alimentary Fern-palm, well appreciated by the 
aborigines for the sake of its nuts, together with a 
true kind of Yam (Dioscorea hastifolia), the only plant 
on which the natives, in their pristine state, anywhere 
in Australia, bestowed a crude cultivation, are, with 
species of Borya, Sowerbeea, Heemodorum, Ricinocar- 
pus, Macarthuria, Chloanthes, Aphanopetalum, Xylo- 
melum, Caleana, Calectasia, Petrophila, Leschenaul- 
tia, Pseudanthus, Nematolepis, Nuytsia (the terres- 
trial mistletoe), Leucolena, Commersonia, Rulingia, 
Keraudrenia, Mirbelia, Gastrolobium, Labichea, Meli- 
chrus, Monotaxis, Actinotus, and Stypandra, remark- 
able for their geographical distribution ; because, as 
far as we are hitherto aware, these West Australian 
genera have no representatives in the wide interja- 
cent space until we approach toward the eastern, or, 
in a few instances, to the northern regions of Austra- 
