VEGETABLE VAGARIES. 273 



X. hastilis, reproduced on the left-hand side of Plate XLVIII. This photograph was 

 taken when the flower-spikes were most fully developed. At that season their contour 

 is perfectly symmetrical and their cylindrical surfaces completely studded with tiny cream- 

 white starlike florets. The name of the Underground Blackboy, or Grass-tree, has been 

 popularly applied to this species with reference to the circumstance that it produces 

 no conspicuous stem or trunk like the other species, the crown of leaves springing direct 

 from an underground rhizome or root-stock. Very abundant growths of this Blackboy 

 occur on the borders of the railway track between Perth and Fremantle, Western 

 Australia. The view here reproduced was taken in this locality. 



The most striking representative of the Grass-tree tribe is probably the one 

 sharing with the species last referred to a portion of Plate XLVIII. This is the 

 so-called Drumstick Grass-tree or Blackboy, Kingia australis, which is limited in 

 its distribution to the Southern districts of Western Australia. The popular name 

 applied to this Grass-tree bears a very obvious relationship to the contour of the 

 flower-spikes. A number of these are developed from the terminal crown, and in 

 place of being abnormally elongate and spear-like are short and capitate. With this 

 species of Grass-tree the trunk is never subdivided as in the case of the arborescent 

 Xanthorrhseas, the finest plants being represented by a single erect cylindrical column 

 with its crown of wiry grass-like leaves and capitate flower stalks. The average 

 height to which these Drumstick Grass-trees grow is ten or twelve feet, though they 

 occasionally exceed twice this altitude. A remarkably fine example of this plant, 

 presented to the nation by Sir Malcolm Eraser, K.C.M.G., the Agent General for the 

 Colony of Western Australia, has been transported to and set up in the Botanical 

 Galleries of the British, Natural History, Museum. It is of no less a height than 

 thirty feet. 



The development of the leafy crown of Kingia is subject to considerable variation. 

 In the example figured it is rather stunted and short, the selection having been made 

 with reference more to the height of the tree and to the abundance of the 

 flower stalks. In some of the specimens to the rear of the chief individual figured 

 it may be observed that the fibrous leaves occupy a much larger relative mass. The 

 locality which yielded this picture is in the vicinity of Pinjarrah, Western Australia, 

 and consists of enclosed, partly cleared, pasture ground that was previously thickly 

 grown over with this and the ordinary arborescent Grass-tree. Examples of the last- 

 named species are observable beneath the shadow of the larger trees on both the right 



and left-hand sides of the photograph reproduced. The small light-coloured irregularly 

 MM 



