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At some old camping places of the natives, we found the seed-vessels of Pandanus, a plant which I had never seen far from the sea coast; and also the empty shells of the seeds of a Cycas. Mr. Calvert, John Murphy, and Brown, whom I had sent to collect marjoram, told me, at their return, that they had seen whole groves of Pandanus trees; and brought home the seed-vessel of a new Proteaceous tree.
To whatever family the foliage hitherto regarded as proteaceous by many able palaeontologists may eventually be shown to belong, we must be careful not to question their affinity to that order of plants on those geographical considerations which have influenced some botanists.
Besides fir-cones or fruit of true Coniferae there are cones of Proteaceae in abundance, and the celebrated botanist the late Robert Brown pointed out the affinity of these to the New Holland types Petrophila and Isopogon. Of the first there are about fifty, and of the second thirty described species now living in Australia. Eocene Proteaceous Fruit. Petrophiloides Richardsoni.
The Proteaceous tree was small, from twelve to fifteen feet high, of stunted and irregular habit, with dark, fissured bark, and large medullary rays in its red wood: its leaves were of a silvery colour, about two inches and a half long, and three-quarters broad; its seed-vessels woody and orbicular, like the single seed-vessels of the Banksia conchifera; the seeds were surrounded by a broad transparent membrane.
I also saw a large tree and obtained specimens of it, belonging to the natural order Bignoniaceae, with terminal spikes of yellow flowers, and rough cordate leaves; and a Proteaceous plant with long compound racemes of white flowers, and deeply cut leaves, resembling a tree with true pinnate leaves. The large-seeded Angophora mentioned by me before, also grew in this district.
Although this peculiarity of the structure of stomata is also found in plants of widely distant orders, it is, on the whole, but rarely met with, and being thus observed to characterise a foliage previously suspected to be proteaceous, it adds to the probability that the botanical evidence had been correctly interpreted.
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