64 THE VICTOKIAN NATURALIST. 



Although a good deal of the scrub land round Sydney has 

 been cut up into building allotments, though roads have been 

 cleared and the beautiful flowering shrubs burnt, there yet 

 remain, fortunately, large areas on the shores of the harbour 

 and the adjacent outer coast where the native flora may be seen 

 in all its beauty. In this respect the botanists and entomolo- 

 gists of Sydney are decidedly better off than we are in 

 Melbourne, who are restricted for an afternoon's excursion 

 to the rapidly diminishing moors of Brighton and Cheltenham, 

 and to a narrow strip on the banks of the Yarra. 



My remarks on the scrub flowers round Sydney are based on 

 afternoons spent at Manly Beach, Bondi, and Botany Bay, all 

 within an hour's tram or boat journey of Sydney. The general 

 aspect of the country is the same at all these places. The soil 

 is of a light, sandy character, with outcrops of the Hawkesbury 

 sandstone, frequently forming little rocky plateaus, with perpen- 

 dicular sides, four to ten or twelve feet high, varied occasionally 

 by gullies having steep, rocky banks. My visits were made in 

 April and May, perhaps the most barren months for flowers, 

 and exceptionally so this year, owing to a drought of three or 

 four months, which had retarded the springing up of the winter 

 herbaceous plants. I had expected very little, and was most 

 pleasantly surprised to iind, notwithstanding these unfavourable 

 circumstances, sufficient shrubs in flower to enable me to 

 picture to myself the character of the scene in the spring, and 

 to form a comparison between the vegetation clothing the shores 

 of Sydney Harbour and that of Port Phillip. At first sight the 

 appearance of the two is not very dissimilar, but the flowering 

 scrub round Sydney is somewhat higher than that we find 

 about Mordialloc and Oakleigh, and of a rather deeper green. 

 It is formed chiefly of shrubby banksias, acacias, hakeas, and 

 other proteaceous bushes, not mainl}', as with us, of Lepto- 

 spermum and Ricinocarpus. My attention was soon caught by 

 a bushy banksia {B. ericifolid) with linear leaves, presenting, 

 in this respect, a striking contrast to those familiar to us on the 

 shores of Port Phillip, by also a dwarf acacia in full flower, with 

 bipinnate leaves (.4. discolor), the only common species of this 

 genus in Victoria with leaves of this character being our well- 

 known wattles. Another bush largely prevalent which excited 

 my curiosity was Petrophila pukJiella, belonging to the same 

 tribe as Isopogo7i, with divided rigid leaves of the same 

 character as those frequent in that genus, and whitish, downy 

 flower spikes, these and the fruit cones being terminal or in 

 the forks of the branches. A much more showy bush of the 

 same family, also of a genus unknown to Victoria, was Lam- 

 hcrtia formosa, with terminal clusters of beautiful crimson flowers, 

 differing from those of the allied genus Grevillia in being- 

 straight tubes, and resembling the South African genus Proiea 

 in the involucre of coloured bracts. It is remarkable that the 



