VEGETABLE VAGARIES. 273 
X. hastilis, reproduced on the left-hand side of Plate XLVIII. This photograph was 
taken when the flower-spikes were most fully developed. At that season their contour 
is perfectly symmetrical and their cylindrical surfaces completely studded with tiny cream- 
white starlike florets. The name of the Underground Blackboy, or Grass-tree, has been 
popularly applied to this species with reference to the circumstance that it produces 
no conspicuous stem or trunk like the other species, the crown of leaves springing direct 
from an underground rhizome or root-stock. Very abundant growths of this Blackboy 
occur on the borders of the railway track between Perth and Fremantle, Western 
Australia. The view here reproduced was taken in this locality. 
The most striking representative of the Grass-tree tribe is probably the one 
sharing with the species last referred to a portion of Plate XLVIII. This is the 
so-called Drumstick Grass-tree or Blackboy, Kingia australis, which is limited in 
its distribution to the Southern districts of Western Australia. The popular name 
applied to this Grass-tree bears a very obvious relationship to the contour of the 
flower-spikes. A number of these are developed from the terminal crown, and in 
place of being abnormally elongate and spear-like are short and capitate. With this 
species of Grass-tree the trunk is never subdivided as in the case of the arborescent 
Xanthorrheas, the finest plants being represented by a single erect cylindrical column 
with its crown of wiry grass-like leaves and capitate flower stalks. The average 
height to which these Drumstick Grass-trees grow is ten or twelve feet, though they 
occasionally exceed twice this altitude. A remarkably fine example of this plant, 
presented to the nation by Sir Malcolm Fraser, K.C.M.G., the Agent General for the 
Colony of Western Australia, has been transported to and set up in the Botanical 
Galleries of the British, Natural History, Museum. It is of no less a height than 
thirty feet. 
The development of the leafy crown of Kingia is subject to considerable variation. 
In the example figured it is rather stunted and short, the selection having been made 
with reference more to the height of the tree and to the abundance of the 
flower stalks. In some of the specimens to the rear of the chief individual figured 
it may be observed that the fibrous leaves occupy a much larger relative mass. The 
locality which yielded this picture is in the vicinity of Pinjarrah, Western Australia, 
and consists of enclosed, partly cleared, pasture ground that was previously thickly 
grown over with this and the ordinary arborescent Grass-tree. Examples of the last- 
named species are observable beneath the shadow of the larger trees on both the right 
and left-hand sides of the photograph reproduced. The small light-coloured irregularly 
MM 
