1891. A. J. North, `Records of Australian Museum,' vol. i. p. 118:
"Who, in the brushes of the Tweed River, found a nest placed on a mass of `lawyer-vines' (<i>Calamus Australis</i>)."
1892. Gilbert Parker, `Round the Compass in Australia,' p. 256:
"`Look out,' said my companion, `don't touch that lawyer-vine; it will tear you properly, and then not let you go.' Too late; my fingers touched it, and the vine had the best of it. The thorns upon the vine are like barbed spears, and they would, in the language of the Yankee, tear the hide off a crocodile."
1892. `The Times,' [Reprint] `Letters from Queensland,' p. 7:
"But no obstacle is worse for the clearer to encounter than the lawyer-vines where they are not burnt off. These are a form of palm which grows in feathery tufts along a pliant stalk, and fastens itself as a creeper upon other trees. From beneath its tufts of leaves it throws down trailing suckers of the thickness of stout cord, armed with sets of sharp red barbs. These suckers sometimes throw themselves from tree to tree across a road which has not been lately used, and render it as impassable to horses as so many strains of barbed wire. When they merely escape from the undergrowth of wild ginger and tree-fern and stinging-bush, which fringes the scrub, and coil themselves in loose loops upon the ground, they are dangerous enough as traps for either man or horse. In the jungle, where they weave themselves in and out of the upright growths, they form a web which at times defies every engine of destruction but fire."
<hw>Lawyer-Cane</hw>, <hw>Lawyer-Palm</hw>, and <hw>Lawyer-Vine</hw>. See <i>Lawyer</i>.
<hw>Lead</hw>, <i>n</i>. (pronounced <i>leed</i>), a mining term. In the Western United States and elsewhere, the term lead in mining is used as equivalent for lode. In Australia, the word <i>lead</i> is only used in reference to alluvial mining, and signifies the old river-bed in which gold is found.
1875. `Spectator' (Melbourne), June 19, p. 75, col. 2:
"There was every facility for abstracting the gold in the rich lead of a neighbour."