288 , QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. {1 Ocr., 1898. 
be no difficulty in placing them on the market, if available in sufficient 
quantity. The hangmg bunches or racemes of white flowers are really 
beautiful, and, if you take one and look into it, you will note it has a form similar 
to the flowers of the silky oak. And, indeed, it is a very near relative to that 
sturdy tree. It belongs to the curious order Proteacew, which is so largely 
represented in our Queensland flora, there being no less than nineteen genera 
of them, divided into seventy-two species. 
The kiosk, where refreshments are daintily served on small tables out of 
doors, is a most prettily designed building, and is frequented by hundreds of 
people, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, when those who are not members 
of the “ Gigocracy,” and have no vehicle with which to escape into the country, 
ean wander at their ease amongst beautiful surroundings undisturbed by noise 
and dust, of which they hear and sce more than sufficient all the week. Of 
this privilege those whom circumstances or want of circumstances or preference: 
incline to walk rather than to drive, avail themselves every Sunday literally 
by the thousand. 
’ Have you ever seen Bunya-trees in bloom? The chances are that you 
might visit the Gardens for many a day and never notice that they have 
flowers. You know, of course, the cones which come down about Christmas 
time with such a thud, but you have not perhaps noted the 
brown male catkins which you will find very conspicuous on many 
of the trees if you take the trouble to look for them. Our friend the 
Bunya loves the society of his own kind, It is his nature to have his lower 
branches suppressed, and to shoot up aloft in search of light and air, and to 
make a “stick” which will delight the heart of the timber-getter. So when he 
is planted out as an ornamental tree he gets on all right for about thirty years, 
and then he seems to wonder why the other trees are not shouldering him and 
forcing him upwards; his lower branches, which in the forest would disappear, 
become scraggy, and those at the top seem to be doing all the work, and thriy- 
ing. Tinally, after some years, the Bunya finds that he cannot get along under 
the wholly unnatural conditions in which man has placed him; so he gives up 
the fight in disgust, and dies. In his native forest he produces fine timber, 
often most prettily grained and veined. It has the additional recommendation 
that it can be worked with great facility. In the good old days of the early 
settlers, when a man could take his chance between bushrangers, cannibal 
blacks, and other choice products, the Bunya-trees were the property of certain 
tribes of blacks. But all the other tribes liked the Bunya-nuts, which made: 
them very fat. So they repaired to the capitalistic tribes, who welcomed them 
with open arms. Hating the Bunya-nuts set up an intense desire for animal 
food ; so some of the visiting tribe were generally pressed to stay when the time: 
for departure came, and so affectionately did their hosts regard them that they 
ate them. ‘To the left is the shade garden, therecesses of which we will explore 
next month. 
Horticulture. 
NOTES ON SCENT-YIELDING PLANTS. 
By NAT, SINE. 
Rose.—This delightful perfume is procured from several species of rose, but 
most commonly from the Losa centifolia provincialis and damasceria, 
Chemically speaking, otto or attar of roses is a mixture of two bodies— 
one, a solid non-odorous, white stearoptene, melting at 95 degrees I, and 
boiling at 800 degrees I'., constituting from 7 to 14 per cent. of the whole; 
the other, the odorous portion, being a yellowish liquid hydrocarbon of 
undetermined constitution. The stearoptene is readily soluble in the liquid 
portion, from which it may easily be separated by cooling. 
