1 Srpr., 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 287 
and this is attributable in a great measure to the use of_cane-sugar. An 
addition of brown muscats to the vintage would improve the quality of this class 
of wine. 
The sweet reds were also a good class, the prize-taker being a very fine 
wine, xpparently of a good age, and fully matured. 
A little more maturing would haye improved some of the others. 
A very good wine for its age was shown from Bundamba. Ina couple 
of years, when it has lost its sweetness and newness, it should turn out excellent. 
If Bundamba can produce wine like that, there is a field for an enterprising 
vigneron. ‘The white, however, from the same place was badly prepared, and. 
out of condition. 
The writer has touched upon the defects apparent in the different classes, 
and has now much pleasure in adding that many of the wines were very good, 
and others showed that with attention to manufacture and subsequent handling 
they could be much improved. On the whole, the outlook is encouraging for 
meeting possible southern competition. The writer judged the wines by points 
on clearness, colour, bouquet, soundness, taste, and atter-taste—the last because, 
although a wine may be pleasant on first entering the palate, it may leave an 
after-flavour less agreeable. On all these points vignerons should be careful to 
examine their wines; and where found faulty in one or more respects, they 
should study how to remove the defect and improve the wines. 
Botany. 
PLANTS REPUTED POISONOUS TO STOCK. 
By F. MANSON BAILEY, ¥.L.S., 
Colonial Botanist. ; 
WALLFLOWER POTSON-BUSH (GASTROLOBIUM G RAN DI- 
FLORUM, F.y.M.) 
Tuts is a dwarf or sometimes a tallish shrub of a light-erey colour, from 
being more or less clothed with short soft hairs. The leaves are usually 
opposite, oblong, and more or less notched at the end, from 1 to 3 inches long; 
the short ones are frequently heart-shaped ; all are of a stiff, harsh character. 
The flowers are borne on short racemes in the upper axils of the branches, and 
are rather large and showy, of somewhat chocolate colour, bearing some 
resemblance to the garden wallflower. The pods are silky-hairy, and hang on 
slender stalks from the persistent calyx. 
The genus is almost limited to Western Australia, where the thirty or more 
species are known as poisonous to stock. G. grandiflorum is the only one 
met with in Queensland; and so virulent is its poison at certain stages of its 
erowth (particularly when in flower), that working horses and bullocks have 
to be yarded at night when passing through belts of the plant. 
It seems only to be dangerous in a living state; for the late T. K. Staiger 
and others haye failed to discover any active poison from an analysis of dried 
portions of the shrub. - 
Some writers have recommended frequent burning off of the plant as a 
means of its eradication; but were this plan adopted, the aftergrowth, which 
would naturally spring up from the root-stocks, would make the localities more 
dangerous to stock than before. 
