GRASSES AND FERNS. 
95 
specific name shows what Labillardiere, the eminent 
botanist, thought of it when he named it in 1804. 
Its delicate faintly-hlac plumes, seeming to float in 
the air, viewed at a short distance would suggest the 
presence of a fairy cloud. In the Mallee this grass 
flourishes best when growing amongst the prickly 
and low branching shrubs. Here, where its young 
succulent growths are free from stock interference, 
it reaches up amongst the growths, and is exceedingly 
graceful and dainty. That this grass grows most 
successfully under garden conditions, I proved at 
Shepparton some years ago, growing it intermingled 
with the previously-mentioned species. 
Then there are the ferns! If the rest of our 
vegetation were all insignificant and unimportant, 
we would have enough glory, enough beauty, and 
enough of variation, to talk about and to be proud 
of in our ferns. What can compare with an Austra- 
lian fern gully — its majesty and gracefulness, its 
coolness and joy, its refreshment and charm? There 
can be nothing like it. The gully shaded by the gums, 
the hazels (Pomaderris), the wattles, and many other 
trees and shrubs, is further darkened by the cool 
dark stems of the tree-ferns, and by their long spread- 
ing green fronds — the tree-ferns growing along the 
watercourse, and even far up the hillside slopes — 
hundreds of them, all graceful, all beautiful. We see 
the stream cool and crystal, babbling down the moss- 
covered stones, which supply coolness and music to 
the glen. 
And then we see the smaller ferns in the under- 
growth and among the rocks. There are the water ferns 
