[23]. In the West Indies there is a similar fruit, Anacardium, growing at the extremity of the enlarged stalk.
This is not uncommon near Port Jackson. Another species of the same genus inhabits Queensland, and two others Western Australia; all bearing similar woody fruits or seed-vessels.
The arboreous and shrubby vegetation of Australia is almost exclusively evergreen, or rather one might say the leaves are persistent, for the beautiful shades of green characterising the forests and fields of the northern hemisphere are wanting, and are replaced by a monotony of olive-green or bluish-green. On the other hand, brilliantly coloured flowers abound, the natural orders Leguminosæ, Myrtaceæ, and Proteaceæ being especially numerous, diversified, and generally dispersed over the whole country.
Although large areas in the interior have not been botanically explored, the flora of the country is almost as well known as that of Europe, not in its minutest details, but in general character and composition. Robert Brown the eminent English botanist, facile princeps among botanists of his time, was the first real investigator of the exceedingly rich Australian flora. He accompanied Flinders on his voyage of discovery in Australian seas during the first years of the present century, and made very extensive collections of dried plants, which he elaborated after his return home. Noteworthy among subsequent botanists who have turned their attention to the vegetation of that part of the world are Sir Joseph Hooker, Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, and the late Mr. George Bentham. Assisted by the extensive collections and notes accumulated by Mueller, combined with the numerous earlier collections preserved in England, Bentham wrote a descriptive account of all the plants known to inhabit Australia. This work is in English, and it is a monument of industry and learning, consisting of seven octavo volumes with an aggregate of 4000 pages.
LEAVES, FLOWERS, AND FRUIT OF Eucalyptus amygdalina.
Sir Ferdinand von Mueller has since largely supplemented this work, besides publishing a number of highly important, fully illustrated monographs of the more important genera, such as Eucalyptus and Acacia. According to Mueller’s latest census of the flora, the number of species of flowering plants and ferns known to inhabit the country at the end of 1888 was 8909, belonging to 1394 genera and 149 natural orders.
These are large numbers, but, what is more remarkable, something like 7700 of these species are endemic, or peculiar to Australia. The endemic element in a flora is nowhere in the world higher, if even so high, in so large an area, as in Western Australia, where eighty-five per cent of the species are peculiar, and of the remaining fifteen per cent few species extend beyond Australia.
Several genera are very numerous in species, notably Acacia, of which there are upwards of 300, and Eucalyptus, of which there are 150; and Grevillea (Proteaceæ) is represented by 150, and Melaleuca (Myrtaceæ) by 100 species.
Foremost in utility and most prominent in the scenery all over Australia are the species of Eucalyptus, locally named blue gum, green gum, iron-bark, stringy-bark, etc. etc. They vary in stature from dwarf bushes to the tallest tree in the world, one species, E. amygdalina (p. [370]), considerably overtopping the “big trees” (Wellingtonia) of California. In some parts of Victoria there are groves of this tree averaging upwards of 300 feet in height, and several, as recorded in Mueller’s useful Eucalyptographia, have been found to measure more than 400 feet, and the tallest of all 471 feet.