Page:London Journal of Botany, Volume 2 (1843).djvu/185

 where, for about four hundred yards wide, in a direction from north-west to south-east, every tree in the forest had been levelled. The kind of lane, thus formed in the forest, was two hundred yards long, and not a tree was left standing, except a few bare trunks. The storm, after traversing the before-mentioned narrow belt of land, appears to have crossed the Estuary, there about two miles broad, and struck its eastern shore, about a mile from the town of Australind, laying prostrate every tree in its course for about a similar width of space, then ascending the hills and descending into the valleys, right over the Collie and Preston Rivers; but how far it might proceed into the interior, is unknown. In all my travels, I have never witnessed any thing like the effects of this storm, nor heard or read of aught similar. It could not have been a tornado or whirlwind, because the trees were levelled flat all one way. At Perth, the night between the 17th and 18th of June was excessively tempestuous, the hailstones having broken several hundreds of panes of glass.

Two or three days after my return from the Vasse to Australind, I was so fortunate as to meet with an opportunity of forwarding all my specimens as far as the Murray in Mr. Singleton's cart, and accompanying the driver myself, I reached this gentleman's residence, after a four days' journey; which was as pleasant as can be expected in the bush, at this season of the year. Mr. Singleton is the Government-Resident of the Murray District, and the day after my arrival at his house I proceeded to examine the land in his enclosure, where many horses have died, no less than nine, within the last year. Mr. S. was firmly persuaded that this mortality was attributable to some plant, which the animals had eaten among the grass, on its first springing up after the rains. He had carefully examined, after death, the bodies of the horses, and had found that they invariably perished from inflammation in the kidneys and neck of the bladder, producing stranguary, and of course intolerable suffering. My own opinion is that the Ranunculus Coloneus of Hugel is