Botany.] 
NATURAf. HISTORY. 
521 
served upon the North-west Coast, where also Abroma, 
hitherto limited to the tropical parts of New South Wales, 
has been discovered bearing flowers and young fruit. One 
species of Commersonia was gathered at widely-different 
parts of the north-western shores, and Lasiopetalum, whose 
species are more general at both extremes of the parallel 
of the colony of Port Jackson, has been also seen just 
within the tropic on the East Coast, and at Dirk Hartog's 
Island, off Shark’s Bay, on the opposite shore. 
Capparides. — At least ten species of Capparis have been 
discovered upon the coasts of Terra Australis, for the most 
part within the tropic, but of these the fructification of two 
are wanting. A few have been detected on the East Coast, 
but they are more frequent and various in their species upon 
the north-western shores of the continent. Within an area 
on this extensive coast, not exceeding four degrees of lon- 
gitude, on the parallel of 15° South, a tree of very remark- 
able growth and habit, has been traced, having all the ex- 
ternal forni and bulk of Adansonia of the western shores of 
Africa. At the respective period of visiting those parts of 
the North-west Coast, this gouty tree had previously cast its 
foliage of the preceding year, which is of quinary insertion, 
but it bore ripe fruit, which is a large elliptical pedicellated 
imilocalar capsule, (a bacca corticosa) containing many seeds 
enveloped in a dry pithy substance. Its flowers, however, 
have never been discovered, but from the characters of the 
fruit, it was (upon discovery) referred to this natural family. 
M. Du Petit Thouars has formed a new genus of Capparis 
pauduriformis of Lamarck, a plant of the Island of Mau- 
ritius, which he has named Calyptranthus. It has one divi- 
sion of the calyx so formed, that by its ‘arcuated concavity 
(before expansion) it conceals the whole flower, and the 
