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THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 



flowers should be a comparatively facile task. A sheeny lilac silk cut to the required 

 contour, and with the edges symmetrically frayed out, would reproduce all the essential 

 features, to which the addition of the remaining structural elements would involve 

 but little labour. 



The species here figured is one of the finest of its kind. It forms somewhat 

 irregular loosely growing grass-like tufts, with flower-bearing panicles that attain to 

 two or three feet in height. In another form, T. multiflorus, common in the same 



district, the plant 

 forms more com- 

 pact hemispheri- 

 cal masses a foot 

 or so in height, 

 with much more 

 abundant but 

 smaller flowers. 

 In a third species 

 again, Thysanotis 

 Patersoni, the 

 plant takes the 

 form of a climber, 

 its exquisite lilac 

 stars bespangling 

 all manner of ad- 

 ventitious vegeta- 

 tion, while its own 

 slender wire-like repent stem is 

 almost invisible. As might be 

 anticipated, the frail beauty of 

 these Fringed Violets, like that 

 of our native Harebells, is 

 essentially evanescent, depart- 

 ing within a short interval 

 of their being plucked. To 

 successfully photograph them it 

 is desirable to take the camera 



to their native haunts, and 

 to portray them in situ or 

 in freshly-gathered groups. 

 The examples figured were 

 thus culled from that ver- 

 itable mine of wild-flower 

 wealth, the railway em- 

 bankment between Perth 

 and Fremantle. 



The tempting field of 

 indigenous vegetation has 

 to be abandoned here to 



W. Samlle-Kent, Photo. 

 FRINGED VIOLET, Thysaott dichotoma. 



