270 MEMOIR OF DR. HARVEY. 



three fourths of its vegetation. He is a venerable looking 

 man, with snow-white hair and long beard, square-built frame 

 and ruddy features, and an intelligent eye, that lights up with 

 enthusiasm when on his favourite subject. His habit for years 

 has been to traverse the country in the collecting season with 

 his three ponies and one or two natives, and to live for months 

 together in the bush, shifting his quarters as he exhausts each 

 neighbourhood. He had many things to tell me about the 

 local vegetation, and particularly of several new and curious 

 genera which he had recently discovered in a newly-opened 

 country three hundred miles to the northward. He gives a 

 most glowing account of its vegetable riches, reports two new 

 genera of Proteacex, besides innumerable beautiful species of 

 the same order, and a superb Verticordia, with brilliant crimson 

 flowers as large as half-a-crown (the usual size of the flowers 

 of the old species being a threepenny piece), and the shrubs 

 perfect sheets of bloom, so beautiful that the waggoner who 

 drove him used to stop and turn his bullocks out of the road, to 

 avoid trampling down this plant. Mr. D. gathered so much of 

 it the first day he saw it, that after putting into papers as many 

 specimens as he required, he fairly made his bed of the remainder. 

 Unconsciously he had plucked such a quantity and stuffed 

 his bags with it. One of the Hue family is a very curious and 

 beautiful plant, and quite a new type in that order. He told 

 me also that he has noticed a curious irritable movement in the 

 hairs of several of the composite plants here, particularly in 

 those of the everlastings; one hair bending towards another, 

 and then the two half revolving backwards and forwards. Next 

 day we had a walk together by the river-side and over the 

 hills, when I gathered a number of a species of snail (rare 

 things here), and Mr. D. got specimens of a little shrub 

 (Cryptandra tridentata), which he had repeatedly sought for 

 before and never happened to spy, so we both returned pleased. 

 April 21st. I bought a supply of buckets, bowls, and plates, 

 for Alga? work, and had a walk with the controller-general of 

 convicts, Captain H., who is an amateur naturalist. We 

 picked up many small matters on the beach, but few seaweeds, 

 which I am told to expect after a gale. Alas, the weather is 

 cruelly fine ! However, I found several pretty good specimens 

 of Crassatella hingicola, a bivalve shell, interesting as one of the 



