Botanical Register and Botanical Magazine; some of the Proteaceæ have also been described in Brown's Supplement.* If to these sources of information we add a short notice of the vegetation of the country by Dr. Brown,† and a similar paper by the late Mr. Charles Frazer,‡ there is little further to notice concerning the published accounts of the Botany of this part of the world.
The materials from which the following sketch has been drawn up are the foregoing documents, and an herbarium of about 1000 species, formed by the communications of Mr. James Drummond, now resident in the Colony, Captain James Mangles, R.N., R. Mangles, Esq., Mr. Toward, Gardener to Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Gloucester, and N. B. Ward, Esq. of Wellclose Square, to all whom I beg to express my thanks for the assistance they have afforded me. Some information regarding the climate and soil has also been derived from papers in the Journal of the Geographical Society, and from a memoir upon Western Australia by Dr. Milligan, which was published in the Madras Journal for October 1837.
The Swan River Colony is stationed on the South-west coast of New Holland, about two degrees nearer the tropic than Sydney, on the opposite coast, the mouth of the river being nearly in 32° S. lat., whence it runs gradually in a north-easterly direction. The Colony itself is situated upon both sides of the river, and extends as far south as the Murray in lat. 32°. 33'. According to Dr. Milligan the entire area of the Colony is about 50 miles by 30; but there is no evidence to shew whether all the plants hereafter to be noticed were collected within these narrow limits.
The country is described as being usually of the open forest description, consisting of undulating plains, covered with a great profusion of plants; three-fourths of the trees belonging to the genus Eucalyptus. It is broken by the
* Supplementum primum Prodromi Floræ N. Holl. Lond. 1830. 8vo.
† General View of the Botany of the Vicinity of Swan River; in Journ. of R. Geogr. Soc. I. 17. 1832.
‡ Remarks on the Botany, &c. of the Banks of the Swan Riverm Isle of Bauche, Baie Géographe and Cape Naturaliste in Hooker's Botanical Miscellany, I. 221, 1830.
