Page:London Journal of Botany, Volume 2 (1843).djvu/175

 cultivation, so I mean to leave this place about the beginning of October, bending my course first towards Mount William and Saddleback. Afterwards I shall investigate the mountainous country behind Cape Leuwin and Cape Naturaliste, which, from what I have already seen, promises to yield a rich harvest of botanical novelties, and thence ascending the Blackwood River, which I believe to be identical with the Beaufort, I hope to reach the same spot where I crossed it in my inland journey to King George's Sound, and so to travel south in that direction. During this expedition I shall be accompanied by my eldest son, and we shall hardly return to the Swan before the close of February; the object being to collect this season all the seeds we possibly can secure of the southern plants.

I have just been examining a very curious individual of the natural order Ampelideæ, perhaps a Cissus, though undescribed, if such, by De Candolle; but my want of a good magnifying glass renders it difficult for me to make out the number of its stamens, and often baffles me in the investigation of nearly allied plants. The leaves are cut, like those of the Parsley-leaved Grape, and the inflorescence is very small, borne in a sort of corymb, like Cissampelos, and succeeded by berries, which, when ripe, are blue, and contain, if perfect, four seeds. No plant can well be rarer than this appears to be; I have known it for the last four years; but growing in a single spot and only two or three plants of it. Perhaps its natural tendency is to climb, for each corymb is furnished with a tendril like the Vine; but where I have found it, on the top of a Quartz-stone hill, there is nothing for it to climb upon. When botanizing lately in the vicinity of the Vasse, I met with two species of an interesting Proteaceous plant, which I was inclined to refer to Mr. Brown's genus Agastachys; but his description led me to doubt it. In proceeding southward, these plants first made their appearance in the open mahogany forest, after crossing the Capel River: they appear to be herbaceous. One bears a few lance-shaped leaves, growing close to the ground, but the great bulk of the