340 A. A. HAMILTON. 



the South African and Australian forms as a distinct species* 

 Muschler, Man. FL Egypt i, (1912) 257, says:— " A small 

 genus of only one species distributed throughout the Medi- 

 terranean region, South Africa and Australia. Muschler's 

 species is E. spinosa (L.) Oampd., and no reference is made 

 to Steinheil's E. australis. 



On the headland south of Ooogee Bay, several members 

 of the typical Port Jackson swamp vegetation are estab- 

 lished in a drainage basin. In the centre of the submerged 

 area the stoutly buttressed "tussocks" of Gahnia psitta- 

 cormn Labill., the largest of our Sedges, offers a firm 

 resistance to the pressure of the floodwater, protecting the 

 weaker rooting herbage from its onrush and consolidating 

 the unstable soil. It is assisted in this work by several 

 shrubs, among which the pendulous branched Viminaria 

 denudata Sm., is prominent. In the Botany swamps the 

 Viminaria frequently forms large shrubberies which are 

 occasionally devastated by fire. The young growth, which 

 arises in great profusion, is plentifully furnished with broadly 

 ovate leaves, but this juvenile foliage is not long main- 

 tained, the xerophytic conditions obtaining in the swamp 

 necessitating the relinquishment of the flattened leaf lamina 

 and the modification of its structure to the elongated 

 cylindrical petiole (phyllode) of the adult plant, which 

 occasionally reaches a length of nine inches. 



Dlllwynia floribunda Sm., is neither so plentiful nor 

 communal as its larger neighbour and is less partial to the 

 aquatic zone. Its heathlike leaves are erect, the inner 

 whorl closely appressed to the stem and branches, and the 

 outer series imbricately arranged, their close investment 

 affording a measure of protection against adverse xerophytic 

 influences. Leptospermum araclmoideum Sm. a low prickly 

 shrub with a divaricately branched habit, and a thicket 

 like growth, also favours a position somewhat removed 

 from the permanently submerged area. 



