Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/157

 139 of it to-day from the veins of a tree which I rolled up in my hands like pitch; I shall send it in the next box.

There are a hundred plants, flowers, shrubs, &c., that I have not the names of, nor do I know how to describe them. One very abundant plant is called wild carrot: we have the dock, penny-royal, trefoil, sorrel, rib grass, fern, flax (native), which is pretty abundant, burnet, yarrow, sowthistle, moss (the hygrocrocis), sedum, buttercup, eringo, wyay or native yarn, davisia, and several blue, white, red, and yellow climbers and creepers, anigozanthus, orobus solis, chrysanthemum, primroses, daisies, rockets, orchis, cardinal, sweet pea, and a beautiful purple flower, which looks as if it were trimmed with lace, and called here the lace flower, and many others.

I sometimes think of making a hortus siccus of all these flowers; but they are too transient, and I am so much occupied, that I have not hitherto been able to accomplish it. Many beautiful shrubs and flowers are now in bloom, of which I must mention the black wattle, which bears a yellow blossom resembling that of the laburnum at a distance, but much finer. The hills are generally of the granite formation; but they are frequently covered with vegetation and trees up to their very summits. At this time of the year, spring, you find very luxuriant grass on them. Mr. Drummond says he counted fifty-four varieties of native grasses, most of them perennial; but the most abundant grass is annual: he says there are many varieties of the British genera, but that few, if any, of the species are similar.

This is a healthy climate; the heat is well suited to me, and I do not perceive it has enervating effects on any one. The mornings, evenings, and nights, are always cool enough; and very often the land and sea breezes (the latter particularly) make even the middle of the day in Midsummer quite cool.

Oct. 4th.—I shot and skinned a bittern this day; it is the ghost of a bird, its body not so large as that of a pigeon, yet >