EUCALYPTUS TREES. 185 



yielding half its weight in dye. Fiber of great excel- 

 lence and strength is obtained from the bark of Pim- 

 elea clavata, a bush widely distributed there. It 

 resembles that of bast from Pimelea axiflora in Gipps 

 Land, and that from Pimelea microcephala of the Mur- 

 ray and Darling desert. A Fern-palm (Zamia Fraseri) 

 attains in West Australia a height of fifteen feet. It 

 is there, like some congeners of America and South 

 Africa, occasionally sacrificed for the manufacture of 

 a peculiar starch, though the export of the stems (and 

 perhaps of those of the Xanthorrhoeas also) would 

 prove much more profitable, inasmuch as these, when 

 deprived of their noble crown of leaves, though not 

 of their roots, will endure a passage of many months, 

 even should the plants be half a century old. Such 

 any wool- vessel might commodiously take to Europe. 

 This alimentary Fern-palm, well appreciated by the 

 aborigines for the sake of its nuts, together with a 

 true kind of Yam (Dioscorea hastifolia), the only plant 

 on which the natives, in their pristine sta,te, anywhere 

 in Australia, bestowed a crude cultivation, are, with 

 species of Borya, Sowerbsea, Hsemodorura, Ricinocar- 

 pus, Macarthuria, Chloanthes, Aphanopetalum, Xylo- 

 melum, Caleana, Calectasia, Petrophila, Leschenaul- 

 tia, Pseudanthus, Nematolepis, Nuytsia (the terres- 

 trial mistletoe), Leucolsena, Commersonia, Bulingia, 

 Keraudrenia, Mirbelia, Gastrolobium, Labichea, Meli- 

 chrus, Monotaxis, Actinotus, and Stypandra, remark- 

 able for their geographical distribution ; because, as 

 far as we are hitherto aware, these West Australian 

 genera have no representatives in the wide interja- 

 cent space until we approach toward the eastern, or, 

 in a few instancfes, to the northern regions of Austra- 



