272 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



suggestive of the aboriginal representatives of humanity. The group is most 

 essentially Australian, limited in its distribution to the temperate districts, 

 and apparently the surviving relic of an age in which they and other colossal 

 members of the Sedge and Hush tribe, Juncacese, were the paramount forms of 

 vegetation. 



The most familiar and widely spread representative of this tribe is the 

 arborescent Grass-tree, or Blackboy, Xanthorrhcea arborea, characteristically portrayed 

 by several growth phases in Plate XL VII. As it more commonly occurs, this 

 tree rarely exceeds eight or ten feet in height, and there is only a single or but 

 sparsely divided crown of long narrow grass-like leaves at the summit of the black, 

 cylindrical stem. In situations specially favourable to its growth, however, it attains 

 to a much more luxuriant development. An example that is reputed to be the finest 

 of its species extant in Western Australia is represented in the lower figure of the 

 Plate above quoted. This remarkably fine example is growing, and haply preserved 

 from destruction, in the grounds of the hostelry that constitutes the half-way house 

 between Donybrook and Bridgetown, in the above-named Colony. As indicated by 

 the lad standing near it, its altitude is little short of twenty feet. The tree has not 

 produced many of its characteristic flower-spikes within recent years, though one may 

 be observed emerging from the crowns of foliage towards the right. 



Drakesbrook, on the Bunbury line in the South- Western district of Western 

 Australia, furnished the subject of the photograph reproduced in the upper moiety 

 of the Plate under notice. It embodies not only fine examples of the same species of 

 Blackboy, but a luxuriant growth of other vegetation that imparts to the scene 

 an almost tropical appearance. Most conspicuous among these secondary growths 

 are the pinnate, palm-like, leaves of Macrozamia Fraseri, one of the Cycadacese. 

 Space unfortunately forbids the reproduction of the separate photographs taken of 

 finer isolated examples of this plant, in which the large central pine-apple-like 

 fruit are clearly depicted. Mingled with these Cycads may be observed an abundant 

 growth of a fern that is accounted by botanical authorities to present little, if any, 

 distinction from the familiar English bracken, Pteris aquilina. 



The Xanthorrhseas figured in this illustration have produced an abundant crop 

 of flower-spikes. They are for the most part, however, of the previous season's 

 growth, and are in consequence dark in hue and much weathered and dilapidated. 

 A correct idea of the pristine aspect of these flower-spikes, when their contour was 

 symmetrical, may be formed by a reference to the figure of an allied species, 



