THE BOTANY OF THE COLONY.
Baron Hugel, Dr. Lindley, and Sir William Hooker, have published lists of Western Australian shrubs and plants, but the most complete and elaborate work on the botany of Western Australia is the series of nineteen letters published in the "Inquirer," by Mr. Drummond, of Hawthornden, in the colony, and from them we shall compile the present chapter; but, interesting as they are in their fullest and most minute details to botanists, it is possible that they may be TOO descriptive and extend too much into detail for general readers, and we shall therefore abstain from giving a catalogue of the various indigenous plants, and confine our remarks to the more useful ones.* The first to which Mr. Drummond alludes is the blackboy, of which there are several varieties. The glaucus-leaved York blackboy is, however, the most important, and grows thirty feet in height without a branch. It is considered by the settlers the best material for thatch, and the young and tender leaves are found to be an agreeable vegetable, and also fodder for horses, goats, sheep, and cattle. The natives are particularly fond of the blackboy, whilst its sound old flower-stalks furnish them with the means of obtaining a light by friction. the native yam, of the class Dioeceae, is stated by Mr. Drummond to be the finest esculent vegetable the colony produces. The fungi, or mushrooms, are also palatable to the Aborigines; one species belonging to this order, and named the Boletus, is remarkable for possessing the properties of German tinder, when well dried, and for emitting a radiant light in its natural state.
[footnote] *This brief compilation is the work of Alexander Andrews, Esq.
There are seventy species of grasses. The genus stripa has several varieties, of which the seeds are injurious to sheep, penetrating into the wool, and sometimes into the carcase and causing death. By adopting the precaution of shearing before the seeds are ripe, this mischief is however obviated. Another description is distinguished as elegantissima, from its beautiful appearance, and is used as a decoration, and for ornamenting rooms.
The bulrush of Scripture is found here, and is used by coopers to stanch their work. A large jointed rush has also been found of great service, and introduced in the walls of houses to advantage, and some varieties of the Restiaceae are useful in thatch work; and in his sixth letter, Mr. Drummond mentions the buttack as very useful in tyings. A climbing species of the Thysanotus, near the Moore river, is much used by the natives as food. The Madge and the Guardine are roots from which the natives extract nutritious food; the pigs are also fond of them, and besides these there are other white roots used as food by the natives.
The oak-leaved Chenopodium is supposed to contain essential oil; it was formerly used by the settlers as a vegetable, and is proved to contain carbonate of soda, so that, as Mr. Drummond suggests, "it would be worth inquiry at what price we could afford barilla as an export." The Erythraea Australis is, we are informed, a good substitute, and is used as such, for hops; and one species of tobacco is indigenous to the colony. The sow-thistle of Swan River was, in the early days of the settlement, used as a vegetable, but is now eaten only by the domestic animals, by whom it is much relished. As a salad, it is said to be scarcely inferior to endive. The Helicrysum, a biennial of the Vasse district, is a grateful fodder for horses, and the Morna nitida for goats, sheep, and cattle, as are also several species of Picris and other shrubs. There is also a native celery, which forms a poor substitute for that of Europe; two varieties of this species are mentioned—the Conna, of which the roots are eaten by the natives after being peeled, and the Kukire, the foot of which resembles the carrot in appearance, with the smell and colour of the parsnip. The wild carrot is also an excellent vegetable, and from its root rich wine has been extracted. The order Eryngo has a species of which the roots when candied have great restorative powers. Of the Hederoma latifolia, Dr. Lindley remarks, that its half-ripe fruits, if sent to Europe, would give several original and valuable scents to the perfumer.
Of the sea-weeds, one particular species, supposed to be the Fucus amylaeceus, thrown in great quantities upon the coast, is mentioned as forming when boiled, sweetened, and spiced, a nutritious and beautiful jelly of a fine rose colour; and as it appears that it may be dried without injury and preserved for years, it would be of value as an export.
The catalogue of indigenous fruits is not very extensive, but one species, belonging to the order Epacrideae, is reported to bear very palatable berries. The Vasse apple, of the size of a peach, is stated when boiled with sugar to be an agreeable sweet-meat.
Another fruit, of the species Mesembryanthemum, is of a less pleasing flavour; but one of the same species, resembling the English gooseberry, is said to be delicious. Mr. Drummond also records the discovery, southward of the Vasse, of a nondescript shrub of about five feet in height, and bearing fruit as large as a middle-sized plum, of a fine purple colour, covered with a rich bloom, and having a stone similar to the plum. It is reported to have a pleasing taste. This completes the list of fruits, which Mr. Drummond acknowledges to be imperfect, as the cultivation of the vine, olive, currant, and other imported fruits has withdrawn the attention of the settlers from the native productions; and we shall now pass to the smaller classes of the Eucalyptus tribe. The Doatta is a species of this class, and the bark of its root is much relished by the natives, having a sweet and pleasing taste, as is also the trunk of the red-gum; and its leaves, washed in water, form an agreeable beverage. They also collect a description of manna from the leaves of the York gum, which yields a considerable quantity of saccharine matter. The common green wattle of the genus of Acacia is found plentifully on the alluvial flats of the Swan, and the bark is much used for tanning; and the gum-wattle of the same order produces so great a quantity of gum as to demand the attention of exporters. Another shrub of this order is found in the Vasse district, and produces galls similar to those of the oak, which might also be collected for exportation. The gum of some of these species is used by the natives as food, and the seeds, when ground, give them a tolerable substitute for flour.
Instead of entering more at large into dry botanical details, I will transfer to these pages a letter from my respected friend, Mr. James Drummond, the botanist already alluded to, which perhaps will prove more acceptable to the general reader.
This letter was published at the time in the local journals.
"Dear Sir,—I send you a few extracts from a journal of observations which I made in a journey to the north, in company with Mr. Gilbert, the ornithologist.* My sons had heard from the natives that a considerable river and lakes of fresh water were to be found about two days' journey to the north of their station on the Moore River; and in company with Captain Scully, the Government Resident of this district, they determined to explore the country in that direction. Mr. Phillips and some other gentlemen who were to be of the party, as well as Mr. Gilbert and myself, arrived at the station too late; I shall therefore principally confine my observations to Mr. Gilbert's transactions and my own.
[footnote] * Mr. Gilbert, an enthusiastic naturalist, and an amiable and highly respectable man, was treacherously murdered by natives to the North-East of New Holland, whilst engaged upon a scientific expedition.
"We left Hawthornden on the 22d August, and slept at the residence of Captain Scully, who had set out some days before to join the exploring party. On the 23d we proceeded on our journey to the north, and in about five or six miles we examined some remarkable masses of granite rocks a little to the right of the road which is formed by our carts and horses passing to and from the Moore River. Mr. Gilbert found a small but curious fresh-water shell in some pools of rain-water on the rocks, and I found two plants which I had not seen before. In about eleven or twelve miles from Captain Scully's we reached a permanent spring called Yoolgan, where there is excellent grass, and where we stopped to dine and feed our horses. Soon after leaving Yoolgan, we met with Mr. Phillips and Mr. John Mackie returning; they had arrived at our station a day too late for the party; we therefore knew that our hurrying on to join them was useless. In ten or twelve miles from Yoolgan we reached Yeinart, a tea-tree swamp, where there is grass and water to be had throughout the year. The night threatened to rain, but we arrived too late to do much in the house-making way; fortunately, the rain kept off until daylight, when we soon covered our house with tea-tree bark, and determined to stop for the day, which I consider the best way, as no collections can be made when it is raining, and provisions and everything get spoiled. It cleared up about ten o'clock, and we went to visit a brushwood swamp, where my son Johnston had shot several specimens of a beautiful species of kangaroo with a dark-coloured fur, overtopped with silvery hairs, called Marnine by the natives: we saw plenty of tracks of the animals, but could not see a single specimen. On the top of a hill to the north of the swamp I succeeded in finding two very distinct species of Dryandra, new to me. I also found a fine species of Eucalyptus in flower, which is distinguished from the Matilgarring of the natives, the Eucalyptus macrocarpus of Sir W. T. Hooker, by having lengthened recurved flower-stalks; the flowers are rose-coloured.
"On the 25th we proceeded on our journey. I observed two new species of acacia near Yeinart. We mistook our road, and made our old station at Badgee-badgee, where we stopped to dine and feed our horses. I also found some curious aquatic plants in the pools of water among the rocks at Badgee-badgee. After dinner we succeeded with difficulty in tracing our road to our present station on the Mouran pool, the cart tracks being nearly obliterated by the trampling of the sheep. On arriving, we found that the exploring party had returned, and that Captain Scully and my son James had left, on their return, about half an hour before our arrival. The mutilated specimens of plants brought home by the party, and the accounts of some which were left behind, determined me to visit the new river myself, after botanizing a day in the vicinity of the station, where I found a fine glaucus-leaved Anadenia, and Mr. Gilbert got specimens of the blue kangaroo, and several small new quadrupeds—one of them apparently a true rat, almost as large and mischievous as the Norway rat. Having got two natives, one of whom (Cabbinger) had been with the party to the north, we started on the 27th, and slept at a spring called Boorbarna. On the way I found a species of the common poison which I had not seen before, and a beautiful Conospermum, with pannicles of blue flowers varying to white. I was informed, by my son Johnston, that a plant like horehound, but with scarlet flowers, in tubes about an inch long, grew on the top of a stony hill to the north of the spring; I went and found the plant, which belongs to Scrophularinae; I also found a Manglesia, allied to Tridentifera, but having the leaves more divided; I also found a beautiful blue climbing plant, a species of Pronaya, on the top of the same hill. On the 28th, soon after setting out on our journey, I found two splendid species of everlasting flower, of which my son Johnston had been the original discoverer; one, with golden-yellow flowers varying to white, has the flowers in heads different from anything of the sort I have seen before, and will, I think, form a new genus of Compositae; and the other with pink flowers, growing two feet high, something like Lawrencella rosea, or Rhodanthe Manglesii, but if possible finer than either. In nine or ten miles to the north of Boorbarna, we crossed a curious tract of country, covered with what I considered a variety of quartz, which breaks with a conchoidal fracture, but it has very much the appearance of flint; in many places the pieces were large, with sharp angles; my sons complained that it injured their horses' feet, but by alighting, and leading our horses over the worse parts, I did not perceive any bad effects from it. This tract of country produces some interesting plants; a splendid Calathamnus, with leaves nine inches long, and showy scarlet flowers, was found by my youngest son, and I got plenty of specimens.
"With regard to a new Banksia, allied to Aquifolia, which he found here, I was not so fortunate, and he brought home no specimens. After crossing several miles of this quartz formation, we came upon an extensive flat of strong clay, covered with Eucalyptus, and some curious species of acacia; we crossed a considerable river, or brook, running strong to the west, and about two miles, after crossing this brook, we made the river we were in quest of at a place called Murarino by the natives. Near the river I found a splendid plant, which had been first observed by my son Johnston; he took it for a Lasiopetalum, but I expect it will prove to be a species of Solanum; it grows two or three feet high, with large purple flowers, with calyxes like brown velvet; the leaves are irregularly shaped, acuminate, about two inches long, and an inch and a half wide at their broadest parts; the stems are prickly, and all the leaves covered with a down as in Lasiopetalum. I am uncertain about the genus, not having seen the seed-vessels, but whatever that may be, it is of our finest Australian plants.
"We stopped to dine on the river, and in about four miles farther to the north, we reached two fresh-water lakes called Dalarn and Maradine. Ducks of various sorts were here in thousands, and the water-hens, or gallinules, which visited the settlements on the Swan some years ago, were plentiful. Mr. Gilbert shot three or four at a shot. I found a fine Baechia, which had been first found by my son James, and a curious new plant belonging to Compositae, but not yet in flower. The appearance of the country about these lakes, of which there are several besides those I have named, and the plants which grow about them, which are generally met with at no great distance from the sea, seem to prove that the lakes are at no great distance from it, and that the Darling Range does not extend so far to the north. No hills of any description appeared to the west; from the top of a hill to the east, two remarkable hills appeared, apparently about thirty miles to the north; one of them was observed by my son to have a remarkable peaked top, and they supposed they might be Mount Heathcote and Wizard Peak. We saw, as we came along, a high hill, which the natives called Wangan Catta; they said it was three days' walk to it; it lay due east of our course.
"On the 29th, we returned on our track for about seven miles, until we reached the first running river we met on our journey to the north. Our guides agreed to take us back by a different route, and to take us to a hill where a curious species of kangaroo called Damar by them, would be met with. My son Johnston has shot several of these animals about a day's walk to the east of our station on the Moore River. We therefore ascended this river in a course S.E. by E., and soon after we were upon its banks, we came upon a grassy country; three or four miles up we stopped to dine and feed the horses, at a place called Nugadrine; several pairs of beautiful falcons, the Falco Nypolencus of Gould, were flying over us, and Mr. Gilbert succeeded in shooting one of them. After dinner, we proceeded in the same direction for nine or ten miles; we soon crossed the tracks of Captain Scully and my sons on their return; they had gone up the main or northern branch of the river, and had found but little grass while they followed its banks; but they had passed over a great deal of grassy land in crossing the country from it to the Moore River.
"We travelled for ten or eleven miles through a splendid grassy country, and met with a large tribe of natives, several of whom had never seen white men before; they were very friendly, and offered us some of their favourite root, the wyrang, which grows abundantly among these grassy hills. They made so much noise, that we wished to get some distance from them to sleep, but they all followed us and encamped near, many of the single men sleeping by our fire. In the morning of the 30th I went to the top of a hill, near our bivouac, while Mr. Gilbert was superintending the preparations for breakfast, and clipping the beards of some of our new friends. After breakfast, we started direct for our station on the Moore River; the natives who were with us as guides considering our stock of flour insufficient to proceed any farther in the direction of the hill where they expected to find the Damars. For almost the whole of this day we travelled over the most splendid grassy country I have ever seen in Australia; the hill-sides, as far as we could see in every direction, were covered with beautiful grass, and of a golden colour, from the flowers of the beautiful yellow everlasting flower which I have described in a former part of this letter, which is only to be found in the richest soil. After reaching our station, I was a day or two employed in drying my specimens of plants. My son Johnston pointed out a most beautiful new Dryandra, which he had discovered on the top of a hill near the Mouran-pool; I have named the species Dryandra floribunda, from its numerous blossoms, which almost hide the leaves; it grows twelve or fifteen feet high, and in such abundance, that the side of the hill on which it grows actually appears of a golden colour for several miles. I consider it the most beautiful species of the genus yet known for cultivation.
"I am, Sir, "Your obedient servant, "James Drummond.
"P.S.—Our course generally by compass from Hawthornden to these lakes has been several points to the west of north. The natives informed us, when at the lakes, that they could reach the sea-coast long before sunset.
"Hawthornden Farm, Toodyay Valley."