1865. Rev. J. E. Tenison-Woods, `History of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia,' vol. ii. p. 157:
"<i>Calamus Australis</i>, a plant which Kennedy now saw for the first time. . . It is a strong climbing palm. From the roots as many as ninety shoots will spring, and they lengthen out as they climb for hundreds of feet, never thicker than a man's finger. The long leaves are covered with sharp spines; but what makes the plant the terror of the explorers, is the tendrils, which grow out alternately with the leaves. Many of these are twenty feet long, and they are covered with strong spines, curved slightly downwards."
1867. F. Hochstetter, `New Zealand,' p. 135:
"<i>Rubus Australis</i>, the thorny strings of which scratch the hands and face, and which the colonists, therefore, very wittily call the `bush-lawyer.'"
1882. T. H. Potts, `Out in the Open,' p. 71:
"Torn by the recurved prickles of the bush-lawyer."
1889. Vincent Pyke, `Wild Will Enderby,' p. 16:
"Trailing `bush-lawyers,' intermingled with coarse bracken, cling lovingly to the rude stones."
1890. C. Lumholtz, `Among Cannibals,' p. 103:
"In the mountain scrubs there grows a very luxuriant kind of palm (<i>Calamus Australis</i>), whose stem of a finger's thickness, like the East Indian Rotang-palm, creeps through the woods for hundreds of feet, twining round trees in its path, and at times forming so dense a wattle that it is impossible to get through it. The stem and leaves are studded with the sharpest thorns, which continually cling to you and draw blood, hence its not very polite name of lawyer-palm."