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hand, equally necesssry to those who have to study and discuss 

 plants and their natural history to have at hand for convenient 

 reference a collection of specimens of those plants from different 

 localities and showing all the variations in their growth. The 

 name is the key to the information accumulated in books, and a 

 herbarium, as a collection of dried specimens of plants is called, is 

 necessary, as are books, for the acquirement of information regard- 

 ing all those natural objects referable to the vegetable kingdom. 

 Hitherto it has been the custom to send specimens of plants 

 suspected of being poisonous to other colonies, where libraries and 

 herbaria are in existence, in order to have their identity estab- 

 lished, but it is to be hoped that before long this course will not 

 in ordinary cases be necessary. 



It is one of the objects of this account of the poison plants of 

 the colony to supply readers with the means of identifying for 

 themselves such of the known species as they may meet with. A 

 description of each is given, copied, with verbal modifications, 

 from the second and seventh volumes of Bentham and Mueller's 

 Flora AustraliensiS) so that any one on rinding a plant supposed to 

 be poisonous may compare it with the description here given. If 

 it shows the characters denned in the printed description, its 

 identity may be considered established, but any material disagree- 

 ment will show that the specimen does not belong to the species 

 described. 



The most important of the poison-plants of this colony belong 

 to the natural order Legiiminosae, which is characterised, in "its prin- 

 cipal division, by flowers having the form well-known to all as " pea 

 blossoms," and by the seeds being contained in a u pod." They be 

 the botanical names of the genera Gastrolobium and O.vvlobimn 

 which agree with one another in having their stamens all fiee, o: 

 not united to one another, and in their leaves being simple, or no 

 composed of more than one blade or leaflet. The main point o 

 difference between the Owlobiinns and the Gastrolobiums, takin 

 each genus as a whole, lies in the number of seeds in the pod tha 

 of Gastrolobium containing only two, while Oxyhbinin may have fou 

 or more. In Oxylobium parviflorum and O. rcliisiiui, however, the 

 number of seeds does not exceed four, and, in the former, it is often 

 only one or two, probably from failure of the seeds to set. The p 

 may be stalked or not in either genus, but in Gastrolobium it i 

 rarely without a stalk, and is shorter than in O.vvlobiitin, which 

 produces usually a greater number of seeds. The bunches of 

 flowers in the poisonous species of Gastrolobium are commonl 

 longer than in O.vylobuini, and more frequently form the terminal 

 points of the branches, instead of springing from the angles between 

 the upper leaves and the stem. It is sometimes difficult to deter- 

 mine to which of the two genera a given plant may belong, but if 

 more than two seeds are found in the pod it may be set clown as 

 Oxylobium. Plants closely allied to one another, may, however, be 



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