272 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
suggestive of the aboriginal representatives of humanity. The group is most 
essentially Australian, limited in its distribution to the temperate districts, 
and apparently the surviving relic of an age in which they and other colossal 
members of the Sedge and Rush tribe, Juncacese, were the paramount forms of 
vegetation. 
The most familiar and widely spread representative of this tribe is the 
arborescent Grass-tree, or Blackboy, Xanthorrhwa arborea, characteristically portrayed 
by several growth phases in Plate XLVII. As it more commonly occurs, this 
tree rarely exceeds eight or ten feet in height, and there is only a single or but 
sparsely divided crown of long narrow grass-like leaves at the summit of the black, 
cylindrical stem. In situations specially favourable to its growth, however, it attains 
to a much more luxuriant development. An example that is reputed to be the finest 
of its species extant in Western Australia is represented in the lower figure of the 
Plate above quoted. This remarkably fine example is growing, and haply preserved 
from destruction, in the grounds of the hostelry that constitutes the half-way house 
between Donybrook and Bridgetown, in the above-named Colony. As indicated by 
the lad standing near it, its altitude is little short of twenty feet. The tree has not 
produced many of its characteristic flower-spikes within recent years, though one may 
be observed emerging from the crowns of foliage towards the right. 
Drakesbrook, on the Bunbury line in the South-Western district of Western 
Australia, furnished the subject of the photograph reproduced in the upper moiety 
of the Plate under notice. It embodies not only fine examples of the same species of 
Blackboy, but a luxuriant growth of other vegetation that imparts to the scene 
an almost tropical appearance. Most conspicuous among these secondary growths 
are the pinnate, palm-like, leaves of Macrozamia Fraseri, one of the Cycadacez. 
Space unfortunately forbids the reproduction of the separate photographs taken of 
finer isolated examples of this plant, in which the large central pine-apple-like 
fruit are clearly depicted. Mingled with these Cycads may be observed an abundant 
growth of a fern that is accounted by botanical authorities to present little, if any, 
distinction from the familiar English bracken, Pteris aquilina. 
The Xanthorrheas figured in this illustration have produced an abundant crop 
of flower-spikes. They are for the most part, however, of the previous season’s 
growth, and are in consequence dark in hue and much weathered and dilapidated. 
A correct idea of the pristine aspect of these flower-spikes, when their contour was 
symmetrical, may be formed by a reference to the figure of an allied species, 
