ON APPARENTLY NEW SPECIES OF HALMITURUS. 



107 



plant is now growing under the care of Mr. Kefford, of the 

 Acclimatisation Garden, it will be possible to determine what 

 the plant is. 



The native food-plants of the desert are deserving of patient 

 study, and, by a knowledge of them, the lives of explorers may 

 be, at times, preserved. 



The proper way of using Nardoo, grass-seeds and the oil-seed 

 Portulaca, are worthy of investigation. Very little is known of 

 Yowa and other underground bulbs and roots. 



Bulbs of Hypoxis hygrometrica, Labill., with a yellow flower, 

 were sent me as a native food-plant from Mitchell Downs. 



A starch is prepared from a native tuber on the North Coast, 

 supposed to be a " Tacca." Specimens of this farina are to be 

 seen in the Brisbane Museum. The whole subject of indigenous 

 food is deserving of more extended enquiry than it has yet 

 received. 



ON APPAEENTLY NEW SPECIES OE 

 HALMATURUS. 



BY 



C. W. DE VIS, M.A. 

 (Read on the 8th August, 1884). 



Those who, like myself, are of opinion than an interesting book 

 might be written upon the colouring of animals and plants, 

 will feel indebted to a German biologist — Herr Eimer — who 

 has, in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of 

 Wiirtemberg, endeavoured to explain the present distribution 

 of colours in the Vertebrates. As the result of his researches, 

 Herr Eimer proposes, for our acceptance, three canons. 1st, 

 the ornamental colouring of the primitive stock consisted of 

 longitudinal stripes ; the interruption of the stripes gave rise 

 to spots ; the lateral elongation of the spots produced cross- 

 bands. 2. The process of transformation is most complete in 

 adults of the male sex ; females and young retain more per- 

 sistent ti-aces of the original pattern. 3. The transformation 

 has not taken place simultaneously over the whole body, but 



