155 
SURVEY OF THE INTERTROPICAL 
1822. a repository of food for rapacious insects, as in 
Jan. 5. sarracenia, or the American pitcher-plant; it is 
also probable that the air, disengaged by these 
drowned ants, may be important and beneficial 
to the life of the Australian plant, as Sir James 
E. Smith has suggested, in respect to the last- 
mentioned genus, wild in the swamp of Georgia 
and Carolina; 
“ I spent much time in a fruitless search for 
flowering specimens of cephalotus ; all the plants 
were very small and weak, and shewed no dis- 
position to produce flowers at the season, and 
none had more than three or four ascidia^,"' 
The only edible plants that Mr. Cunningham 
found were a creeping parsley, (apium prostra- 
tum, Labil,) and a species of orach, (atriplex 
Halimus, Brown) ; the latter was used by us 
every day, boiled with salt provisions, and 
proved a tolerable substitute for spinach, or 
greens. During our visit we caught but very 
few fish, and only a few oysters were obtained, 
on account of the banks being seldom uncovered, 
and the presence of the natives, which prevented 
my trusting the people out of my sight for 
fear of a quarrel. Shell-fish of other sorts were 
obtained at Mistaken Island in abundance, of 
which the most common were a patella and an 
* Cunningham MSS. 
