f
which are the villas and pleasant flower-gardens of the citizens, where
one sees tropical fruits growing in great abundance,--including the
orange, lemon, citron, pineapple, and the like. Some of the floral
displays were truly gorgeous, embracing the flaring warratah and the
glowing banksias, decked with curious and lovely foliage. Here and there
were to be seen the Norfolk Island Pine, of which one never tires, and
which is a great favorite all over this country. It branches straight
out from the trunk with a succession of hard prickly leaves inclining
upward at the ends. Its color is always of the deepest green.

The Botanical Gardens of Adelaide cover a hundred and thirty acres, the
hedges of which are formed of a picturesque variety of yellow cactus,
acacias, magnolias, and myrtles. Here we first saw the Australian
bottle-tree, which is native only to these colonies. It receives its
name from its resemblance in shape to a junk-bottle. This tree has the
property of storing up water in its hollow trunk,--a well-known fact,
which has often proved a providential supply for thirsty travellers in a
country so subject to drought. Here also was seen the correa, with its
stiff stem and prickly leaves, bearing a curious string of little
delicate pendulous flowers, red, orange, and white, not unlike the
fuchsia in form. The South Sea myrtle was especially attractive,
appearing in flower with round clustering bunches, spangled with white
stars. The styphelia, a heath-like plant, was a surprise to us, with its
green flower, the first of its species the author had seen. We were
shown a specimen of the sandrach-tree from Africa, which is almost
imperishable, and from which the ceilings of mosques are exclusively
made; it is supposed to be the shittim-wood of Scripture. The Indian
cotton-tree loomed up beside the South American aloe, this last with its
bayonet-like leaves, ornamented in wavy lines like the surface of a
Toledo blade. The groupings of these exotics, natives of regions so far
apart upon the earth's surface, yet quite domesticated and acclimated
here, formed an incongruous picture and an interesting theme for
contemplation.

West Australia, of which Perth is the capital, is eight hundred miles in
width and thirteen hundred long from north to south, actually covering
about one third of the continent. It embraces all that portion lying to
the westward of the one hundred and twenty-ninth meridian of east
longitude, ha