282 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
a“ 
flowers should be a comparatively facile task. A sheeny lilac silk cut to the required 
contour, and with the edges symmetrically frayed out, would reproduce all the essential 
features, to which the addition of the remaining structural elements would involve 
but little labour. 
The species here figured is one of the finest of its kind. It forms somewhat 
irregular loosely growing grass-like tufts, with flower-bearing panicles that attain to 
two or three feet in height. In another form, 7. mudtiforus, common in the same 
district, the plant to their native haunts, and 
forms more com- to portray them in situ or 
pact hemispheri- in freshly-gathered groups. 
cal masses a foot The examples figured were 
or so in height, thus culled from that ver- 
with much more itable mine of wild-flower 
abundant but wealth, the railway em- 
smaller flowers. bankment between Perth 
and Fremantle. 
The tempting field of 
In a third species 
again, Thysanotis 
Patersoni, the indigenous vegetation has 
plant takes the to be abandoned here to 
form of a climber, 
its exquisite lilac 
stars bespangling 
all manner of ad- 
ventitious vegeta- 
tion, while its own 
slender wire-like repent stem is 
almost invisible. As might be 
anticipated, the frail beauty of 
these Fringed Violets, like that 
of our native Harebells, is 
essentially evanescent, depart- 
ing within a short interval 
of their being plucked. To 
successfully photograph them it 
is desirable to take the camera 
W. Saville-Kent, Photo. 
FRINGED VIOLET, Zhysanotis dichotoma., 
